Boys of Hong Kong photo show counters Western stereotype of Asian males
Alexandra Leese set out to challenge the Western view that Asian men and boys are ‘somehow more effeminate or all look the same or are less attractive’. Her show is expected to be seen in Hong Kong later this year
“Why can girls be affectionate with each other, but guys can’t be?” asks 16-year-old Jackie Wong in a scene from a documentary about photography project“Boys of Hong Kong”.
“When you have an open mind, then you won’t be controlled by tradition,” says his friend Kenneth Lin, a school mate and fellow Jay Chou superfan, in the short film. “We don’t need to care about what people think, we can just focus on being a better version of ourselves.”
Seeing how affectionate they were, Alexandra Leese, the photographer on the project, assumed, mistakenly, that they were in a relationship. When she asked them if they were, she says, “their reply was quite innocent; I don’t think they realised how profound that really was”.
“I’ve always been interested in the dialogues of masculinity, in and of [themselves], and also stereotypes that Asian boys and men face,” says Leese, who is from Hong Kong but works in London as a fashion and portrait photographer.
The “Boys of Hong Kong” project sprang from her desire to work on something non-commercial “that I was passionate about”. The resulting photos were unveiled in an exhibition at London’s Red Gallery last week. The exhibition is expected to come to Hong Kong later this year.
