Lost moments on shifting surfaces

Hong Kong's changing urban landscape makes Norman de Brackinghe bristle.

'There seems to be an insistence on the destruction of neighbourhoods, which is absolutely unnecessary. Parks are concreted and grass is only somewhere for insects to live. The problem, I am afraid, is much worse than people imagine,' the 76-year-old photographer says.

Armed with his camera, de Brackinghe has witnessed a battlefield of development on his long walks through this city's older districts.

'Wherever you go, large buildings in the process of erection and their hoardings advertising the future, block the way. There is absolutely nothing remotely holistic about this planning - whole neighbourhoods get trampled underfoot,' he says.

It is in these older areas that the Hong Kong resident finds the subtle, human interaction with the environment that become his photographic subjects - simple ephemeral residues of activity, such as layers of paint, peeling posters and the cracked concrete on a wall.

The photographs in his 'Impermanence' solo show focus on the gradations and surface texture seen on natural, but distressed surfaces.

'The way textures intermingle creates a dynamic that is essentially a happy one. I am drawn to subtle colours and shifts in tone and also to extreme contrasts,' he says.