Photo book offers a young man's perspective of old Hong Kong, all thanks to a chance encounter
A chance encounter leads to a remarkable discovery of vintage 1950s city snapshots
A young immigrant's collection of photographs documenting Hong Kong in the 1950s gives a unique look into a bygone era, but the hundreds of one-of-a-kind pictures may have been lost to history were it not for a coincidental connection following a chance encounter on The Peak.
The photos are the subject of a showcase that opened at the Foreign Correspondents Club on Wednesday as well as a book that debuted last month. They all came from the camera of Lee Fook Chee, who moved to the city from Singapore more than half a century ago.
The book, which tells Lee's story in between 140 examples of his work, is called Lee Fook Chee's Hong Kong. Edward Stokes, founder of the Photographic Heritage Foundation, created it with writer Patricia Chiu.
Lee, a young seaman who taught himself photography, documented the city and sold the pictures to tourists to make ends meet after he settled in Hong Kong in 1954. In 2010, he was back to doing just that at The Peak when Stokes happened by.
"Lee was selling small laminated photos and I bought them just to be nice to him and to give this old man a little bit of income and didn't think any more about it," Stokes recalled.
About a month after that brief encounter, Stokes received an email from Lee's niece in Singapore, in an apparent coincidence. She asked him to look at her uncle's photos, and eventually Stokes realised he already had.
"The moment I saw the three images Lee brought, the Star Ferry in Victoria Harbour, the banks in Central, and the old Lan Kwai Fong in incredible detail, I knew this man must have some incredible negatives," Stokes said.