World Press Photo Exhibition

Dancer Musa Motha by Alon Skuy

 

The 2020 World Press Photo Exhibition is in its 63rd year and this is the third time it has been shown in Hong Kong.

This year it was supposed to be held on March 1 at Hong Kong Baptist University in Kowloon Tong, but it was abruptly cancelled in late February by the university's officials who were concerned after a pro-Beijing media outlet, DotDotNews attacked the tertiary institution for "inciting violence".

School girls on the way to protest in Hong Kong

Management was concerned pro-Beijing figures would come to the show and stage a protest over the Hong Kong images, and then draw pro-democracy activists to counter protest which could then possibly result in a clash.

So the university cited "campus security" and the coronavirus pandemic as reasons why the exhibition was called off.

Luckily the event was back on March 28, this time in a co-working space in Admiralty, with visitors having to preregister online to ensure only a certain number of people were inside the room per hour.

I managed to catch the show today, the second last day, after work and when the elevator doors opened, there was a large crowd of people waiting to get into the show, filling out paper health declaration forms and showing their confirmation emails to go in.

A first-aider in shock of being arrested

The exhibition shows the best images from the annual photo contest that began in 1955 when a group of Dutch photographers organized an international photo contest to expose their work to a global audience.

It is now shown in 120 cities in 50 countries, and this year, 4,282 photographers from 125 countries entered 73,996 photographs to the contest.

There were photographs of the 2019 anti-government protests by Danish photographer Nicolas Asfouri. It's a series of pictures including school girls in a blue and white uniform holding hands on their way to a "human-chain" protest looking defiant and confident, while another shows a young man who is a first aider pinned down by a police officer on the ground, his facial expression reveals shock at what has happened to him, on his chest are vials of saline solution to treat people for tear gas.

A roadrunner looks at the US-Mexico wall

To be honest these pictures were not the best ones taken during the social unrest, but it is good to see the protests included in the exhibition.

Photographer Alon Skuy of South Africa, took a beautiful portrait of a young man, Musa Motha, who was a promising football [soccer] player, but at the age of 11 had his leg amputated because of cancer. He took up dancing instead and uses his crutches and gravity to create his moves and now performs professionally with the Vuyani Dance Theatre in Johannesburg.

A striking photograph is of a giant barbed wire fence and a roadrunner looking at it inquisitively. It was captured by Mexican Alejandro Prieto of the wall then US President Donald Trump was building along the US-Mexico border. There were concerns the wall would negatively affect 23 endangered and at-risk species. With Biden administration in office, construction of the wall has halted, but nothing yet has been decided.

A car melted by the Australian fires

The Australian fires were shocking to see in the news -- remember those koalas that had to be rescued by humans? Here photographer Matthew Abbott for the New York Times captured the heat of the intense fires with a burnt out car that is melting. Aluminum melts at 660.3 degrees Celsius and there's streams of the melted metal emanating from the vehicle creating an eerie sight. 

The Toronto Raptors had an amazing run in 2019, winning the NBA Championships. Canadian photographer Mark Blinch shot a great picture of the game-winning shot of the Raptors against the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semi-finals in Toronto. Every person's reaction is captured -- almost all of them eyeing the ball go into the basket, as if frozen in time. It could have been a painting of that moment. Amazing.

The final second of the Raptors vs 76ers game

There are other horrific stories, like that of Belarusian women who were forced to have abortions. One woman had a wooden leg when she was pregnant by her boyfriend but he left her when his mother told him she didn't want a disabled daughter-in-law. Another aborted after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, worried she could not handle another child (she already had one). One young woman was sexually assaulted by her boss. All these women did not reveal their faces or names.

In addition there were mages of people fleeing Isis, people burying their loved ones, others just trying to survive under the Taliban, or being defiant and holding protests in the streets, but unsure of what would happen.

Animals were also subjects, with one pangolin held by the tail as a cook is about to butcher it for a meal, or orphaned orangutans clutching onto their human mothers for a chance at survival, and a polar bear mother and cub inspecting flags posted on the Arctic Circle. 

A pangolin about to become someone's dinner

So glad to be able to see this exhibition and see what all the fuss was about. Everyone in the room was respectful and quiet in looking at the pictures, so why cancel it? This is an international photo exhibition that deserves to be shown, photographers capturing moments as they saw them. They help us witness what is happening around the world.

 

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

Macau Bans June 4 Photo Exhibition

Massacre victims being ferried by bicycle to nearby hospitals on June 4

As if repression in Hong Kong is not getting worse, it's also happening in Macau, who is more obedient to Beijing. Earlier this week the Macanese government announced has banned the annual photo exhibition commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Last year's 30th anniversary candlelight vigil in Macau

The photographic show has been put on without any problems before for the past two decades and even received approval earlier this year, but the Municipal Affairs Bureau withdrew its authorization for the show a week ago.

"Our administrative council has decided to standardize orders," said the bureau's President Jose Tavares. "That is, requests for the use of our space must match our attributions and competencies. It was a decision that we made on the council," he added.

Lawmaker Ng Kuok Cheong and one of the organizers, called the revocation "political".

The photo exhibition is usually held in tandem with a candlelight vigil in Senado Square every June 4. But now it is unclear whether the vigil will be permitted to go ahead, which is usually attended by several hundred people, much smaller than the one held in Victoria Park in Hong Kong.

Victoria Park is usually filled with people every June 4

And with the way things are changing quickly in Hong Kong, one wonders if its June 4 vigil will be threatened too, the largest candlelight vigil to remember the massacre on Chinese soil.

Impressions of Art Basel

Japanese installation artist Chiharu Shiota's Where Are We Going?

March is such a busy month with the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Asia's 50 Best Restaurants, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Art Basel Hong Kong and Art Central. Oh and did you know the artist Kaws' Companion is out floating in Victoria Harbour? Wish I could be like him and just relax but there's too much to see!

Photographer Liu Heung Shing

Today was the start of Art Basel and I took a taxi to get there. The drive decided to take the Central-Wan Chai bypass and before we got out of the exit for Wan Chai North, there was a traffic jam with cars going to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The first day is usually reserved for the media and VVIP, but by the time I got there around 3.30pm (it had started around 2pm), the bottom floor of the massive art show was already crawling with people.

And there were lots of beautiful people or people trying to dress arty farty. And lots of Mandarin was being spoken by lots of young women wearing Chanel boucle jackets and dresses, and men in Louis Vuitton shirts and even a crazy white vest with lots of pockets embossed with the LV logo. Do people actually wear this stuff?

Detail of pink swirls of Park Seo-Bo's Ecriture No. 160208

We didn't spot many celebrities, or wasn't paying enough attention, but saw Uli Sigg, the art buyer and philanthropist who is a big supporter of Ai Weiwei. We also saw Hong Kong-born photographer Liu Heung Shing who has come out with a new book comparing and contrasting the Soviet Union and Communist China.

The man himself embodies history, having seen China become a Communist country and watched it transform into a capitalist country with Chinese characteristics. I heard him speak about 10 years ago in Beijing and he has so many anecdotes he can still produce even more books.

But on with the art. My colleague noticed there were fewer large art pieces on show this year, perhaps galleries were worried about having big price tags that would scare off potential buyers and only brought out smaller ones instead.

What is she doing? Dan Colen's Rabbit and the Moon

For example some Francis Bacon prints were going for US$40,000. Wonder if they were snapped up right away.

As usual there was a lot of strange art that wasn't executed very well, and some that were visually arresting, which is what you need at an art fair where it can get mind numbing going by every stall. I did see a few pieces that I had seen at previous Art Basel shows. Perhaps they were hoping to catch buyers who were first timers at the art fair?

One of the large installation pieces was beautiful and airy. It's called Where Are We Going? by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. It's actually composed of lots of strings to make up a series of boats that seem to be floating in the air, making it very dreamy and light.

Rivane Neuenschwander's detail of garlic peel on fabric

A pretty piece in shades of pink is called Ecriture No. 160208 by Korean artist Park Seo-Bo. It's a series of acrylic swirls of paint that seem to be applied with a piping bag and different shaped nozzles. It's so pretty and pastel-y, like a giant vertical cake with tons of pink icing on top.

There were also some sculptures that made us do a double-take. One had a naked woman playing with a rabbit on her chest. New York-based artist Dan Colen created Rabbit and the Moon and it's a weird piece. Who would put that in their living room?

Another has a woman wearing a T-shirt and shorts, reading the paper with miscellaneous goods around her. And then we read the caption and it says: Flea Market Lady by Duane Hanson. A security guard had to be posted next to this statue in case people would touch her!

Chinese artist Zhang Yu performing Tea Feeding

Meanwhile Vietnamese artist Dinh Q. Le presented some quietly strong pieces featuring embroidery on cloth. And the embroidery is white thread on white cloth. One is called Texture of Memory #7 2000-1 and it's a portrait of three people together in a line drawing by embroidery. The lines look simple, but up close involve a lot of work and skill to execute well. Utterly beautiful to me.

This other work was white too. It's three-dimensional and at first it looked like bulbs from flowers, but up close they are actually garlic skins. How did the artist, Rivane Neuenschwander extract these thin skins off of the garlic in one piece? She had to do several hundred for this untitled piece.

Vic Muniz's Letter Rack Hong Kong (Yellow)

I find Brazilian artist Vic Muniz's work fun to look at and so I purposely made sure I swung by Ben Brown to take a look. This time it's more like a random collection of items one might find in someone's memory box or time capsule of Hong Kong. There's postcards and ticket stubs, name cards, coins, maps and stamps. I miss his visually-arresting collages. Or maybe he didn't have much time because Ruinart champagne had recruited him to do a special collection creating collages using the actual bark and leaves from the vineyards. Yawn.

The Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija had some pieces shown this year that are new, but using 2014 copies of the South China Morning Post as his canvas. One was untitled and strangely featured two giant circles on newsprint. Usually he has a message written on them. Another exhibited by another gallery had Chinese characters written in red on top of the paper, saying something like, "We are together under one sky making dreams". I prefer his previous piece that said: "Freedom cannot be simulated".

Oh and one final performance art piece. We saw Chinese artist Zhang Yu pouring red tea in giant bowls that were sitting on top of paper. He kept pouring the tea until it slightly overflowed. Then we could see why -- on the walls were uniform circular blotches from previous pourings. We don't know the significance of it, but they kind of looked like fuzzy ancient Chinese coins. The performance art is called Tea Feeding...

SCMP newspaper used by Rirkrit Tivavanija

After about two and a half hours of going through pretty much the entire fair, it was time to call it a day. I like seeing what's out there, the artistic zeitgeist. It was more whimsical pieces than serious political statements. Another Art Basel done and dusted!

Artistic Passion for Trams

The specially-designed tram that celebrates its 115th anniversary this year

I spotted this special tram over the weekend and love the story behind it.

Up close the tram is covered in hundreds of pictures (about 350) -- of other trams in and around Hong Kong to celebrate 115 years in the city.

They are the work of Japanese artist Koichi Matsuda, who has taken as many as 10,000 photographs of trams in the past five years.

Koichi Matsuda has taken 10,000 pictures of trams in 5 years

He found not only this type of transport but also the advertising on them very eye-catching.

"Hong Kong trams are special. In Japan, there are no double-decker [trams]," Matsuda, 65, said.

"The constant change of tram advertisements is the most suitable subject to showcase the vigorous economic growth of Hong Kong."

In the past five years, Matsuda has visited Hong Kong 20 times and used the same camera and lens to take pictures of the trams, usually at the Shau Kei Wan terminus. He took so many pictures that from 2016 to last year, he held six exhibition in Japan and Taipei.

After seeing his pictures, some Japanese were inspired to visit Hong Kong. "Many of my friends became more interested in Hong Kong and trams after seeing my work," he said.

But Matsuda hoped to use his photos to decorate a tram and the opportunity came after Hong Kong Tramways "liked" one of his photos on social media, and he contacted the company about his idea.

He is thrilled his proposal became a reality. This tram will be running along Hong Kong Island for two or three months. It's one of 164 trams running along the 30km system that carries 200,000 passengers daily.

Ding ding!

Picture of the Day: Michelin Madness

Our view of the photo shoot with all the chefs on stage at the Michelin event

Today was the big day chefs in Hong Kong and Macau have been looking forward to -- the announcement of the Michelin stars.

The event was held at the Grand Hyatt Macau at first it was a pretty tame affair when each restaurant was introduced and the chef came up to receive the guide as an award. Afterwards there would be a group photo of all the chefs who all got one star this year, two stars then three.

However, that's when the mayhem broke out.

People in the audience would start taking pictures with their smartphones, while professional photographers at the back would shout out their frustrations.

"Put your phones down!" they exclaimed in Cantonese, much to our amusement, but some wouldn't listen and the demand was repeated over and over, more exasperated each time.

The climax was when all the chefs were invited on stage and getting that giant group shot is near impossible as you can see from the picture above.

Definitely Michelin Mayhem.

Arty Afternoon

Taryn Simon documented counterfeit items that were seized in New York

After lunch, my cousin and I hit some art galleries in the Pedder Building in Central.

One exhibition in Gagosian Gallery that was really interesting was Taryn Simon's Contraband (2010). It features 1,075 photographs taken at the US Customs and Border Protection Federal Inspection Site and the US Postal Service International Mail Facility at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

Plants (above), drugs, and animal parts were seized too

She apparently worked for a week non-stop at the airport, photographing the constant flow of goods seized from passengers and express mail entering the United States from abroad.

The photographs are small and grouped together in certain ways -- there were lots of sausage shots, mostly in tact, some sliced up, as well as counterfeit clothing and bags like fake Hermes bags, Adidas runners (together with the boxes), and jewellery.

There were also pirated DVDs, steroids, narcotics, plants and sex stimulants. Other odd items included dead animals, cow-manure tooth powder, gold dust and overproof Jamaican rum.

It was a fascinating documentation of what people try to bring into the country, and how Simon tried to photograph them as clinically clean as possible without any frame of reference, except for a plain white background.

The flowers for the China-Pakistan agreement

Another project she did is called Paperwork and the Will of Capital. Have you ever noticed at any major agreement signed between two (usually male) leaders of two countries that there is always a flower arrangement on the table?

This is what Simon photographed -- not the actual flower arrangements, but recreated them before taking their pictures and researching where the flowers came from and how they seem to have no relationship with the countries or the agreements that are signed.

The photographs are blown up large and placed in beautiful teak frames that include a description of the arrangement and the history of the accord, treaty, or decree that was signed.

Floral arrangement for the China-Russia gas deal

That's not all -- the flowers are then pressed and dried and saved too. This is a bit much, but at the same time, the photographs don't mean much without the historical context.

Taryn Simon

Portraits and Surrogates

Until August 5
Gagosian Gallery

7/F, Pedder Building

12 Pedder Street

Central
2151 0555

www.gagosian.com

Learning More about Georgia O'Keefe

Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills encapsulates O'Keefe's art and life

Yesterday we went to the Brooklyn Museum to see Georgia O'Keefe: Living Modern that ends July 23. She is an artist I have admired for a long time and many years ago copied her paintings in pastel. She encouraged me to be fearless, using big strokes, and express myself through vibrant colours.

Four cream-coloured outfits O'Keefe made early in her life

We caught the museum's 1pm tour through the exhibit and the docent was very knowledgeable about O'Keefe and picked certain pieces to show how the curators presented the show.

It wasn't just about O'Keefe's paintings, but also her clothing, a few miscellaneous things from her home and many photographs of her in the clothing, hats and shoes that were also exhibited.

She was born in Wisconsin in 1887 and at a young age showed a talent for art. The family moved to Virginia and when she was a teenager studied at the School of Art Institute of Chicago.

Later she taught art and as our guide explained, after work she would work on her own art, creating abstract watercolours. A friend showed them to Alfred Stieglitz, a well known photographer and art dealer in New York who was impressed by such modern art by a female artist.

This painting was first shown at the museum

He sold some of her pieces -- over US$1,000 in the late 1920s which was a lot of money in those days -- and eventually the two fell in love. Stieglitz was married at the time with a daughter, and was 23 years older than O'Keefe, but he divorced and married O'Keefe.

They lived in Manhattan and one of the paintings shown in the exhibition was of the New York skyline -- something that was usually depicted by men and not women. But O'Keefe was keen to show that she too could do it too -- and just as well. Not only did she paint the skyscrapers, but also in pink, and with three flowers to give them a feminine touch.

At the time she was known for her flower paintings. Women usually painted flowers, but they were small most of the time. O'Keefe felt if she painted flowers really small, no one would notice, so why not big too, like skyscrapers?

She also insisted there wasn't any deeper meanings behind the some 200 flower paintings she made, as some tried to insinuate there were sexual meanings behind the works.

Pink skyscrapers and flowers

One of the paintings on show is called Black Pansy & Forget-Me-Nots painted in 1926 and our guide explained it was first shown in a solo exhibition O'Keefe had in the Brooklyn Museum in 1927.

At the show, one of her friends bought the painting and O'Keefe managed to persuade that person to donate it to the museum afterwards. O'Keefe also gave some of her works during her lifetime to the museum, and after her death.

Our guide pointed out that many of O'Keefe's clothes were monochromatic -- she didn't want to have to worry about colour in her wardrobe when she would rather focus on the colours of her canvas.

Featured in the exhibition are several items of clothing, cream-coloured dresses she made and they are very delicate and reveal her skill in dressmaking. There are also a trio of white blouses, one of which shows very fine tailoring and could very easily be worn today.

She also had a penchant for black with a bit of white contrasting, be it from the collar of a shirt or the cuffs of shirts sticking out from black blazers. Later on she was obsessed about the V-shape and many dresses and jackets had this shape, whether the neckline or pattern on dresses.

One of the delicate blouses O'Keefe made

As more of her work was sold, she and Stieglitz would move to higher floors in the hotel apartment building they lived in. And this wealth would also help O'Keefe become even more independent, buying a car and buying a home and then another one in New Mexico.

She first went there in 1929 thanks to the patronage of an heiress, and O'Keefe immediately fell in love with the place and kept going back there every year until she finally settled there.

In New Mexico she stopped wearing suits and adopted denim as her fabric of choice, wearing shirts, jeans and even fashioned a Chinese-style dress out of the blue cotton.

However, after O'Keefe's first visit to New Mexico for six months, she came back to New York to find Stieglitz was having an affair with another woman; O'Keefe was devastated and even suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized in 1933, mostly because her husband was continuing with the affair.

O'Keefe then finally moved to New Mexico in 1940, purchasing a home there, but then Stieglitz fell ill in 1946 with cerebral thrombosis and she flew back immediately to tend to him until he died in July that year.

A Chinese-style outfit she had made in HK

It took her three years to finally finish dealing with his estate before she permanently moved to New Mexico in 1949. There she was obsessed with painting a mountain called Cerro Pedernal.

One of her works, Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills painted in 1935 encapsulates O'Keefe with the animal skull, a flower and her favourite mountain.

Interestingly there are two outfits shown that have a Hong Kong connection. In 1959 and 1960 she traveled there and got some outfits made, one very east-meets-west, the other looking like a very masculine Chinese robe.

In 1972 she lost most of her eyesight due to macular degeneration and couldn't paint anymore, though photographers would make pilgrimages to New Mexico to take pictures of her. The show has portraits of her by Yousuf Karsh, Bruce Weber, Ansel Adams and Todd Webb.

Andy Warhol also wanted a piece of her and invited her to come to New York to The Factory where he made a silkscreen of her in the same colour as the adobe home she lived in, and was sprinkled with diamond dust. Wonder what she thought of that.

A portrait of O'Keefe in a kimono by Bruce Weber

O'Keefe died in 1986, just shy of her 99th birthday. Art historians like to say she was the first American contemporary artist. Apparently she bequeathed all her things to a very young assistant called Juan Hamilton and her siblings went to court to fight for estate. In the end it was settled out of court.

Learned so much about this remarkable woman and feel inspired by her artistry in art and in life.

Georgia O'Keefe: Living Modern

Until July 23, 2017

Brooklyn Museum

200 Eastern Parkway

Brooklyn

www.brooklynmuseum.org

Irving Penn's Magnificent Images

The photographer himself, Irving Penn, the master of portraits and fashion

At The Metropolitan Museum of Art we also saw Irving Penn: Centennial that's on until July 30. It is 100 years since the birth of the American photographer who died in 2009.

One of his earlier portraits of a chef

I first became acquainted to Penn's photographs through Vogue magazine and thought they were so elegant and beautiful even if the subjects were very simple. Actually there was nothing tricky about them -- it was very straight forward but how they were photographed made them quietly sophisticated and gorgeous.

It was pictures of food in a still life arrangement -- either the ingredients artfully placed, or the finished dish, but hardly garnished or decorated with anything, or models posed with as little distraction as possible to illustrate the article.

The exhibition at The Met features only 150 of Penn's photographs, though it features many of his earlier works that I was unaware of. He started taking portraits of all kinds of people in different jobs from a balloon seller to fireman, waiter, chef, blast furnace tender and butcher, window washer and chamois seller.

Smouldering image of Marlene Dietrich

He hated smoking, and when his mentor Alexey Brodovitch died of lung cancer, Penn became even more aware of the cigarette butts lying all over the streets of New York and decided to use them as subjects for a series of photographs.

They are used butts, some fished out from the streets so they are dirty, and yet Penn makes them look like dangerously beautiful objects. It's so ironic that it makes them arresting images. But after looking at several of them you get the idea and want to move on.

His portraits of people are amazing -- he put his subjects in a tight corner -- Truman Capote, Marcel Duchamp, Spencer Tracy, Igor Stravinsky, and Salvador Dali. Other fantastic portraits include Marlene Dietrich, Cecil Beaton, Pablo Picasso, and Audrey Hepburn.

Penn was famous for his fashion shoots

Penn's studio was in a building with no water and electricity but had natural light that he preferred using. Because of his fame, people did not hesitate to have their portraits taken by him. You can see the backdrop he used for his photo shoots too, and some visitors take selfies with it.

He was also adventurous in his travels, and in the show there is video footage of him in Morocco setting up a basic tent and getting locals in their native dress to have their portraits taken by him.

In another he took pictures of indigenous people in Papua New Guinea. Again he kept everything simple so that the viewer only focuses on the subject, making them arresting images.

It's too bad there aren't more photographs to look at -- I could look at dozens more, particularly of his fashion shoots and still lifes of things like flowers, but alas the exhibition was soon over...

A backdrop he used to use for portraits

Irving Penn: Centennial

Until July 30, 2017

Gallery 199

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Warhol's China Trip

The pop artist with a bellboy from the Mandarin Oriental in 1982

Four ago the Hong Kong Museum of Art held an Andy Warhol exhibition called Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal.

One of the exhibits that was shown were his cardboard boxes filled with all kinds of random items. Apparently each week an assistant would clear off Warhol's desk and anything else of note and put them into the cardboard box where they would be sealed, numbered and put in a warehouse.

Pictures of the Star Ferries in Victoria Harbour

The pop artist must have known that decades later after his death we'd be pouring over his items and trying to figure out what was going on in his mind or his life at the time.

I was so intrigued by the boxes that showed that he had stayed at the Mandarin Oriental, as he kept the notes messengers slipped under his door with the hotel's letterhead on them, and maps, as well as a copy of The South China Morning Post that had an article about him.

And now with art featured all over the city to coincide with Art Basel, the auction house Phillips has teamed up with the Mandarin Oriental to present a collection of photographs that Warhol purportedly took, or were in his stash, of his trip to Hong Kong and Beijing in 1982.

The black and white photographs themselves are actually unremarkable -- they are literally holiday snaps, but they will be auctioned off for tens of thousands of Hong Kong dollars each.

A view from his room including the Hilton Hotel (back left)

I was hoping to see a humorous shot, or a nice picture or several that summed up his trip, but I was expecting too much. He photographed leftovers from dinner, mainlanders wearing Mao suits, the Star Ferry, and then portraits of Alfred Siu, an industrialist who opened a club in the Bank of America Tower.

Siu invited Warhol to come and make portraits of guests at I-Club on opening night, and even surprised the artist and his entourage with a trip planned to Beijing. There are photos of Warhol on the Great Wall of course, and hotel bedrooms with lamps lying horizontal on the beds for some reason.

The photographs were cool to see during the early 1980s, but the captions were frustrating because they were so general that even the viewers have to guess where the photos were taken.

Warhol in China

Lobby, Mandarin Oriental

5 Connaught Road Central

Central

Until April 2, auction May 28

Picture of the Day: Supermoon

Admiring the "Supermoon" from Admiralty

Tonight after dinner, my friend and I walked out of a restaurant in Pacific Place in Admiralty and looked up to see the moon.

The "Supermoon" is closest to the Earth now and so it appears 7 percent larger and 15 percent brighter than usual. The last time it was this close was in 1948.

The moon did look much bigger and we admired it for a few minutes, observing its roundness and brightness while taking pictures of it.

Later in the evening I went out for a run around my neighbourhood and saw many amateur photographers setting up their cameras trying to get a good shot, though there were many street lamps in the way.

Of course taking it from a smartphone isn't the best, but gives an idea of how beautiful it was, because we won't see it again like this until November 25, 2034.

Remembering Bill Cunningham, Fashion Fan

Bill Cunningham taking pictures of people attending New York Fashion Week

I was dreading this day would come and it did. New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham has passed away at 87.

He had been hospitalized recently following a stroke.

Every Saturday evening Hong Kong time I looked forward to watching his video reports, narrated slideshows of the latest trends he saw on the streets of New York.

Sitting in the front row at a Carolina Herrera show

He had a scratchy voice, but full of energy and wit, describing people as "crazy kids" and what they wore, but he had such enthusiasm talking about what he saw, and put it into historical context, that it made me realize that fashion isn't just about what's on the catwalk -- it's about what people are wearing on the street.

For him, fashion shows gave people ideas of how to interpret what the trends are but in their own way. And it also made me see that there are people out there who are individualistic, who aren't afraid to make their own fashion statement.

Or he would notice the changing of the seasons, or colour themes, like everyone wearing black and white stripes, or pink, or leather biker jackets, or fur collars. It was amazing how he would find so many people wearing similar things.

From his video reports showing fashion trends on the streets

Through Bill I became more observant about what other people wore too and saw trends there were happening in Hong Kong too.

I was mesmerized by him after watching the 2010 documentary, Bill Cunningham New York by Richard Press. The director followed Bill as he photographed people and put his columns together.

He always ensured there was a space between him and the subject -- he would photograph the high society ladies, but would never eat with them -- not even a glass of water. He was very ethical, and also true to himself.

When he was young, fashion was always his thing. His family was worried about him being so passionate about it, but he started by opening a millinery shop where he made hats, and would do jobs on the side to pay the bills.

Practically everyone was a subject for Bill to photograph

He did have high profile clients come in, but when hats began to go out of fashion, he picked up the camera instead and started writing about fashion. It was then that he discovered fashion on the street as the story he should be covering, with the pictures to prove it.

When my cousin lived in New York, he bumped into Bill once and had a picture taken with him; another friend who loves fashion, also saw him one wintry day. My brother recalls seeing on the subway a few months ago.

While Bill loved fashion, he himself was not a fashion plate. He lived very simply, wearing a shirt, his denim workman jacket he got in France, a pair of khakis and comfortable shoes, riding on his bicycle.

One of Bill's columns in the New York Times

His studio apartment above Carnegie Hall up until 2010 was filled with filing cabinets of negatives and pictures... one wonders what will happen to all those images...

Once the Metropolitan Museum of Art asked to exhibit his photographs and he declined; But I hope there will be some kind of dedication to Bill somewhere in New York -- like 57th Street and 5th Avenue where he used to stalk?

Thank you Bill, for being inclusive and enthusiastic about fashion. You've encouraged me to look at it with fresh eyes and greater appreciation. We will miss you.