Who are Yau Leung and Lee Ka-sing? 60s iconic photographers’ series of ‘old’ and ‘new’ Hong Kong now at Sotheby’s
Renowned 1960s photographer and contemporary artist offer contrasting photographic views of Hong Kong
Cheongsams (Gloucester Road, 1961), perhaps one of the most iconic photographs of Hong Kong, is the work of the late and renowned photographer Yau Leung (1941-1997).
Yau is also fondly known as the “Bresson of Hong Kong” because of his style, which was a lot like that of French photographer Henry Cartier-Bresson, who pioneered the genre of street photography in the 20th century.
Yau started his career in the 1960s during Hong Kong’s colonial era and his photos documented a rapidly changing city.
His black and white photos conjure a nostalgia about the days when the special administrative region was less crowded and colonial elements pervaded the city.
There were very few Hong Kong photographers from the 1960s and Yau Leung and Fan Ho are the most represented and celebrated. Sotheby’s Hong Kong held a solo exhibition of Ho’s work in 2017.
“There wasn’t really a market for photographs in Hong Kong back in the 1970s and ’80s, if the artists themselves did not properly preserve their works, these precious photographs were basically and regrettably lost in the mists of time,” says Sotheby’s gallery director, Jonathan Wong. It makes these “vintage” photos even more precious. The photography market didn’t really develop until the 1990s when the concept of processing images in limited editions emerged, and that photographers were aware of the need to organise their works.
“This explains why there were very little traceable work left from the photographers of the 1960s and ’70s, and to hold an exhibition of [this] scale becomes a challenging task,” Wong adds. It isn’t surprising then that the works by Yau are in very high demand, especially for those in the field of photography collecting. However, Wong notes that he has seen significant interest from young collectors – who perhaps are less familiar to the landscape of the old colonised Hong Kong – drawn to these nostalgic photos and are curiously reviewing their own city from a different historical point of view.
Wong therefore curated the exhibition, “Vision of Hong Kong from Two Generations: Yau Leung | Lee Ka Sing”, which is now open to the public until June 25. This is the first time that prized processed and signed photographs by the late artist Yau is on offer.