Hidden Agenda photo book celebrates Hong Kong indie music movement’s past eight years
Hidden Agenda The Book, filled with 120 images captured at the venue’s live gigs, belongs on the coffee tables of all serious fans of indie music
Hidden Agenda The Book features more than 120 photos taken at its live gigs by nine local photographers, including Bob Wan, Phey Palma and Enzo Cheung. Apart from a brief introduction in Chinese, the book features very little text. The energetic images – full of pumping fists, smoke machine fog and raised hands making the devil horn sign – are intended to speak for themselves.
Perhaps the most poignant image in Hidden Agenda The Book is a photo spread over two pages showing a group of police inside the club earlier this year – their uniforms only just visible in the dim light. It’s a scene that the Hidden Agenda owners and club regulars must have become used to over the years.
Hidden Agenda’s relaunch sparks hope for Hong Kong’s underground indie clubs
But if anything, this police activity has only brought those involved with Hidden Agenda – the bands, the owners, the audiences – closer together, as a great sense of camaraderie emanates from the images: a naked singer crowd-surfing atop a sea of smiling faces, a singer refilling a fan’s cup from his own can of beer.
