28 photos
Hong Kong 1980s
From the eleventh floor of my flat in Universal Building in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district, I observe the rooftops where my neighbours dry Chinese medicinal roots, herbs, sharks’ fin and other local delicacies. Round the corner, a shop specialises in snake wine, further along, a selection of crafts shops offer paper offerings for the dead, coffins etc ( See my “Papers for Paradise” collection).
At all hours of the day and night, I’m enchanted by the buzz that surrounds me: the market full of pungent and fragrant smells and the stall holders’exhortations, the incense wafting from the temple perched at the top of the stairs at the end of my street, even my neighbours’ nightly efforts at karaoke.
In my neighbourhood the living and the dead live together in harmony.all punctuated at times by the staggering passage of a typhoon...
This is a very personal collection of tinted photographs, first started when I returned to Europe with a strange kind of nostalgia for the colour and vibrancy of Hong Kong street life.
I tint using mainly traditional Chinese photographic pigments of which I still have a stock.
I’m currently preparing an exhibition which will open in Paris early September which will include previously unpublished - and unique - pieces: new prints on fibre-based paper, which I began reworking in colour a few months ago.
Could it be an unconscious desire to preserve ‘my’ Hong Kong, at a time when the region is questioning its future?
A feast for the eyes, an opportunity to dream and reflect …
Text loosely inspired by the French press release written by Monique Devauton
From the eleventh floor of my flat in Universal Building in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district, I observe the rooftops where my neighbours dry Chinese medicinal roots, herbs, sharks’ fin and other local delicacies. Round the corner, a shop specialises in snake wine, further along, a selection of crafts shops offer paper offerings for the dead, coffins etc ( See my “Papers for Paradise” collection).
At all hours of the day and night, I’m enchanted by the buzz that surrounds me: the market full of pungent and fragrant smells and the stall holders’exhortations, the incense wafting from the temple perched at the top of the stairs at the end of my street, even my neighbours’ nightly efforts at karaoke.
In my neighbourhood the living and the dead live together in harmony.all punctuated at times by the staggering passage of a typhoon...
This is a very personal collection of tinted photographs, first started when I returned to Europe with a strange kind of nostalgia for the colour and vibrancy of Hong Kong street life.
I tint using mainly traditional Chinese photographic pigments of which I still have a stock.
I’m currently preparing an exhibition which will open in Paris early September which will include previously unpublished - and unique - pieces: new prints on fibre-based paper, which I began reworking in colour a few months ago.
Could it be an unconscious desire to preserve ‘my’ Hong Kong, at a time when the region is questioning its future?
A feast for the eyes, an opportunity to dream and reflect …
Text loosely inspired by the French press release written by Monique Devauton
© Brenda Turnnidge
