Painful Images of Protest

District councillor Andrew Chiu with his bandaged head

The other day my friend YTSL and I ventured to Sham Shui Po to see an exhibition called "Wounds Of Hong Kong" by photographer Chung Ming-ko, who recently won first prize in the documentary section of the Sony World Photography Awards.

The show was actually housed above a hipster coffee shop that also sold some protest paraphernalia. After we walked through the door, the woman at the desk took our temperature and asked if we were there to see the exhibition.

A massive scar on a protester's leg

When I answered in the affirmative, she told us to go to the back of the store and go up the stairs. "Be careful it's dark up there," she added.

She was right.

We climbed up the steep stairs and the room was very dark, except for Chung's glowing images.

Not all his images were shown, but a handful in the small attic-like space that was completely darkened with black fabric on the ceiling. It was quite stuffy there too (and we were wearing masks).

The dark room made the images even more dramatic, and a reminder that much of the police brutality happened at night.

"While the scars and bruises may fade, we must remember what caused them," says Chung. "The struggle against man and power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

A protester shows the welts on his back

There's a photograph of a man's leg with a massive scar with the surgical stitching still there; another shows one wound stitched up with blue thread to be removed later.

A man wears a helmet and gas mask while revealing the welts on his back. They look absolutely ghastly and must be so painful.

Another show's a man's leg with the skin that looks like it melted off, possibly from tear gas canisters hitting him. Again you can't help but wince looking at it.

Finally there is Taikoo Shing West district councillor Andrew Chiu Ka-yin in side profile, showing his head bandaged where a man attacked him and bit his ear off, his glasses have nothing to hang onto.

The images are absolutely chilling and a forceful reminder of what happened to numerous well known and nameless people in Hong Kong last year.

Wounds possibly from tear gas canisters

This is our collective memory that is documented for posterity in the city's history.

Wounds of Hong Kong by Chung Ming-ko

June 13-July 4

Openground

198 Tai Nan Street

Sham Shui Po