Hong Kong’s 1970s and ’80s neon landscape brought to life in Canadian photographer’s show at PMQ gallery
Greg Girard’s exhibition takes you through the neon-lit streets and into tattoo parlours, bars and hotel rooms of the ‘real’ Hong Kong in the 1970s and ’80s
Hong Kong’s iconic neon signage is sadly disappearing, making an exhibition at Central’s Blue Lotus Gallery in PMQ next month all the more important.
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“HK:PM” showcases images by Canadian photographer Greg Girard, taken during his nocturnal adventures in the city between 1974 and 1986.
Girard takes us through neon-lit streets and into tattoo parlours, dive bars and the hotel rooms frequented by soldiers and sailors. Other scenes depict the predawn emptiness of the city’s streets and alleys bathed in the colours of artificial light.
The exhibition coincides with the release of a book of the same title, with a foreword by award-winning Hong Kong director Ann Hui.
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“I started taking photographs at night as soon as I picked up my first camera,” Girard says. “I never thought of them as night pictures. It was just a different kind of light; whether neon, fluorescent, moonlight or the light of the city reflected off an overcast sky. But Hong Kong was alive at night in a way that other places weren’t.”