When Typhoon Mangkhut battered Hong Kong in September 2018, a massive clean-up followed. But at Thy Lab – a visual-research hub in Sham Shui Po – the storm had dumped a gift on its doorstep: three unrelated family photo albums from the 1980s and 90s. “There were hundreds of photos, many wet and stuck together so it took a few days to separate and dry them,” says Alberto Gerosa, who is helping Thy Lab compile the city’s largest archive of Hong Kong family images. “We posted information online hoping to find the owners but had no luck.” Gerosa says the images are some of the most intriguing of the 10,000-plus visuals that make up the archive the lab began compiling in 2013. “People from all over Hong Kong have dropped off family albums, old cassettes and negatives – boxes they had stored at home.” Other images were retrieved from bins while some were bought from the growing number of vintage shops in the district. Gerosa says a visual archive plays a vital role in creating a “shared memory”. “Communities worldwide collect family photos and home movies to preserve people’s memories and these materials constitute an integral part of a place’s heritage […] People’s aesthetics and habits seen in these images from the past appear very different to today, but the spirit Hongkongers are known for is certainly vivid.” The importance of photo archives is nowhere better illustrated than in American philanthropist Stephan Loewentheil’s collection of early photography of China , which is among the most important in the world with more than 20,000 images taken between 1850 and 1920. It shows traditional architecture, rituals, and the struggles and wonders of daily life. Now aged 70, Loewentheil, who spent decades compiling the collection, is looking for a new custodian and Gerosa says it’s impressive. For now, however, Gerosa’s focus is on the Hong Kong family memories archive, and he says the biggest challenges to date have been technical. “Digitising the large number of images is time consuming. The other day someone dropped off 25 VHS cassettes of ‘Tupperware instructional videos’, ‘Tupperware demonstrations’, and ‘Tupperware parties’. That’s 25 hours of digitising,” he says, adding that including the stories of migrants who have settled in Hong Kong has also been challenging. The long-term vision, says Gerosa, is to build a sustainable, free archive for researchers and artists – “an open collection to consult, contribute to, as well as celebrate”. And he wants people who have images to share to get in contact. “I hope more people will share their audiovisual gems with us.”