Q It seems as if there are 'antique' Hong Kong photos everywhere. But how do you tell the difference between cheap market finds and high-quality original prints? How old are the oldest ones?
WHAT THE EXPERT SAYS:
Dennis George Crow specialises in sourcing old photographs of Asia and has returned to Hong Kong for his latest exhibition, Historic Photographs of Hong Kong, showing at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery in SoHo. 'It's always a challenge to find fresh original and unusual early photographs of Hong Kong that have not been exhibited before,' he says. 'Hong Kong photographs have always been popular. They are the most collected photographs from China, followed by Shanghai.'
'Photography was first introduced to Hong Kong in the beginning of the 1860's,' says Crow. His exhibition features shots from the 1860s to the 1960s by photographers such as Afong (active 1859 to 1900), E. O. Hoppe (1882 to 1972), Daisy Wu (active 1950 to 1970) and others from the same period. (Chinese artists often weren't given the same respect as western photo-graphers, so there are some-times no records of what years they lived, only when they were professionally 'active').
Other sought-after names include John Thomson, Milton M. Miller, and William Pryor Floyd. Crow says that Western photographers often took on local apprentices, who eventually opened their own studios.
KODAK MOMENT:
Photographic methods and techniques changed over time. 'In the 1860s to 1870s, they used large format cameras with an average photo print size of 20 x 25cm, on albumen prints,' says Crow. 'They also made cartes de visite [postcards] or photos sized 5 x 8.5 cm that were usually sold in groups.'