The dream of Hong Kong people during the colonial time was said to be to get rich, move up the social ladder and become a member of the middle class. Since the 1990s, such a dream is said to be increasingly more difficult to achieve with Hong Kong becoming a Chinese city. More than 20 years after 1997, new and non-material expectations are added to the old bottle with the emerging younger generation. In my work, I attempt to document and re-present the souls and the spirit of the Hong Kong people amidst the recent worsening social instability and mounting conflicts.

Concerned with documenting post-colonial Hong Kong as it transitions to China’s ‘New Era’, this is an ongoing project, capturing everyday moments of a Hong Kong in flux.

Created over five years, since the onset of the Umbrella Movement, this collection of photographs represents Tsang’s unexpected personal mourning of the only place he has considered home.

The idea of presenting hundreds of photos in this exhibition is a meditation on excessiveness and displays Tsang’s obsession with capturing the impermanence of a city that is deteriorating. It can also be interpreted as a quandary into how he processes the encroaching absorption of his home city: the disappearing boundary between one country two systems.

Influenced by nostalgia and a desire for simplicity, Tsang has chosen to exclusively shoot with film.

In my ongoing photo and video essay “The Other Sky”, I am observing the contemporaneity around me – the effect of the flow of time on the present, and the dream (memory) of place within a post-truth world seemingly stretched out of linear space and time.

The still and moving images that make this investigation were shot mostly in Hong Kong and Shanghai, two closely linked metropolises that have undergone heavy changes. Space itself in these contemporary cities was, and is still, shrinking and expanding according to the needs and habits of its population that is also in constant flux. Does memory survive within a narrative perpetually rearranging itself?

With “The Other Sky”, I’m attempting to record and order impressions of collective memory.

Silent Photos, Howling Memories.

Having been a photojournalist since 1995, frequently travelling between Hong Kong, China and Macau, I have accumulated an archive of images in film and digital over the past 20 years. In time, my memory of these individual images fused with my subconscious into different amalgams. By re-presenting these memory amalgams in image form I try to comprehend the working of my deeper consciousness and so doing that I shall re-create new memories, which in turn form my new consciousness, and the new me…

‘Urban Disease’, according to the definition on Wikipedia, refers to the kind of disease that occurs when a country becomes more industrialised and humans have longer lives. This kind of disease includes mental illness, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, obesity, etc.

However, these are not the only diseases in our city. Living in Hong Kong and going out every day to see the world, you will soon realise that disease is everywhere.

It is not only people that are getting ill, but the whole city. However, seeing different things and thinking that they are ill, am I the one who is really ill?

After all, what are diseases?

Walls are partitions, and a form of protection.

Over time, cracks will begin to accumulate, like strands of memory; some can be easily noticed, some require closer observation, and some remain hidden under a new coat of paint. Like a middle-aged man who seldom speaks of himself, it will take time to notice hints of his inner thoughts. I try to reveal through these photographs my inner thoughts to invite viewers to contemplate on theirs.

This photo exhibition is inspired by Liu Yichang’s short novel The Turmoil, about the Hong Kong 1967 Leftist Riots.

The Turmoil describes objects from the 1967 riots. Through developing stories of different objects, the novel reflects the relationship between the people and objects in the city.

Living in Hong Kong during this turbulent time, we once again ask the emotionless objects to speak for themselves. Will the story of ‘objects’ be isolated from that of the ‘people’ and reveal another system of values?

If only we could wander around Hong Kong through time to document the transient places and faces before all is gone and forgotten.

Beginning their journey in Beijing, image makers Zero and Hailey illustrate the differences between how places used to be and how they are today by juxtaposing the present with old photographs in the same frame.

Connecting the present with their pasts in 108 photographs: Are we rediscovering ourselves or are we saying farewell to the past?

I often feel powerless in the darkness. Light, containing energy and vitality, lets me feel the meaning of life again and guides me to move on when I am surrounded by helplessness in dark times. It comes from nature or from my relationships with family, friends, or loved ones. It leads me to create rather than to destroy, to become rather than escape. Long after, colour will have faded, family will have gone, love will have vanished, friendship will have come apart, by the time my breath stops. Yet, there will still be light, shining till eternity. So, I make this record of light and present it in this exhibition. I hope it can provide light for others in the darkness.

The anti-extradition law amendment bill movement in Hong Kong has escalated dramatically since June 2019, leaving significant impacts on the city’s everyday environment, scarring the memories of the city. The usual lives of ordinary people became more than unusual. With people adapting to daily resistance and confrontation; chaos and demolition integrated itself into a new order of society. Every captured moment reflects the standoff between violence and peace in the streets. However, the incompatibles beat all odds to coexist in harmony.