An era rediscovered: Hedda Morrison's photographs of 1940s Hong Kong
German documentary photographer Hedda Morrison arrived in Hong Kong at a pivotal moment in its history, and recorded the city's life and landscapes in the immediate aftermath of war and Japanese occupation. Her photos were rediscovered recently.
When the German documentary photographer Hedda Morrison arrived in Hong Kong aboard the steamship Hanyang on September 21, 1946, the colony was poised at a pivotal moment in its history.
In a sense, time stood still. It had only been a year since the Japanese surrender, and Hong Kong was still shell-shocked by four years of brutal occupation. Although recovering rapidly - the city's population had already repaired to its pre-war level - the focus of both the British military administration and the civil colonial administration that replaced it in April 1946 was on the restoration of Hong Kong's commercial life and neglected infrastructure.
As Morrison disembarked, a Japanese monolith memorialising their war dead still dominated one of Hong Kong Island's ridge lines. Below, the city was eerily devoid of motor vehicles, most of which had been looted, stripped or shipped abroad by its occupiers.
Hong Kong was at a standstill from a broader historical perspective as well. Both in terms of its urban footprint and way of life, the colony was little changed from the early 1930s. But unbeknownst to its inhabitants, it stood on the cusp of a dramatic and irreversible transformation. With the Communist Party's civil war victory three years later and the subsequent Korean War boycott that isolated Hong Kong from its natural hinterland, the colony would soon be subject to population pressures and a new economic reality that would change it irrevocably.
Morrison spent six months in Hong Kong intensively photographing its people, backstreets, fishing communities, rural outposts and landscapes. That she did so at such a critical historical moment makes her record a unique time capsule.
