Glimpses of history

Dennis George Crow spent his childhood taking tea at the Peninsula Hotel and playing mahjong with the amahs while his parents met the rich and famous at high-society dinner parties. Now Mr Crow has become one of the world's top experts and dealers in historic photography, with a show that opens today at the 10 Chancery Lane Gallery in Central.

'My speciality is Hong Kong and China,' he said at a lunch in Shanghai, where he showed some of his work last weekend. 'My collection of 8,000 includes Asia and colonial Africa, from the 19th century and early 20th century, with some from Shanghai up to 1937.'

The average price is $3,000 to $5,000, with the most expensive, panoramas of Hong Kong in the 1870s, in the $25,000-$30,000 range.

Born in Los Angeles in 1948, Mr Crow moved to Hong Kong in 1952, when his father took a position as head of the Asian passenger division of American President Line. He studied at The Peak, Glenealy and King George V schools, and the family often stayed in the colony's best hotels, paying only the 15 per cent service charge because of his father's good connections.

He developed a love of Chinese art from his mother, a journalist and polyglot, listening as she escorted visitors around the shops and markets. After his father's death in 1962, the family returned to Los Angeles, and he studied art history at California State University.

His uncle, Carl Crow, was a famous journalist in Shanghai between the wars, who also ran an advertising agency and wrote 400 Million Customers, a standard work on the mysteries of the Chinese market.