Old Gold
A new photography exhibit displays 100 images of Hong Kong in the 19th century, when professionals first started snapping the city.
Early photography was intense. To capture a 19th-century scene, practitioners had to put glass plates coated with poisonous chemicals inside their cameras just before pressing the shutter. It was paramount to develop the images right away, while the exposed plates were still wet. Coolies were a necessity to lug around heavy equipment, which included a bulky, tent-like marquee to reflect light for outdoor shots.
When compared with the ease and ubiquity of modern-day digital photography, experts can’t help but wonder how such a time-intensive process affected what was photographed. That is, how did the tools available to photographers dictate the composition and meaning of their images?
Attempting to answer that question are two curators and their newly opened exhibition of 19th-century pictures of Hong Kong. French scholar Régine Thieriez and Hong Kong photographic historian Edwin Lai gathered 100 images that date back to 1858-1875, when the practice of photography was first taking root in the then-British colony.
“I have never seen one photograph of Hong Kong that was definitely taken before 1858,” Lai said. “What you are seeing are the earliest photographic records of Hong Kong. These pictures, especially the scenery pictures, show us the first visual outlook of Hong Kong, which has been followed for many years by other photographers.”
In fact, it was the colonization of Hong Kong by the British in 1842 that first set the art in motion. At first it was only traveling photographers from the continent who had the money and wherewithal to shoot perennial landmarks such as Victoria Harbor and new ones such as the Happy Valley racecourse.
They also shot portraits of affluent Chinese, which offer a glimpse into the lifestyle and priorities of the time.
“Most pictures were taken on the northern part of the island, centering around the area we now call Central and Western. It is the area that the British influence is most evident,” Lai said. “Some people can see landmarks, like St. John’s Cathedral, as a triumph of western civilization. But you can also see what Chinese people looked like; and for anthropologists, their clothes and the color of their houses.”
Many of these images went with their makers back to Britain or Europe, and this collection curated by Lai and Thieriez is the first of its kind because it was pieced together from private and public collections from around the world instead of simply from local archives.