A Thinking Street Photography Site
We’ve about 2 hours to kill, so what better way to do it and get a bit of mild exercise than to go hiking, from our village to the next.
The theme of the day – rustic beauty. Debris at a nearby beach.
The colours are nice.
Up the steps.
Light at the end of the path.
Car, abandoned.
Nice green window.
Window and scarred wall of an abandoned village house.
Discarded electrical board.
Village road sign.
Nice open view.
Bye bye village!
I’m here again and again.
It doesn’t look like much – but it has wonderful views.
The environment is a work of art.
The mood is always leisurely.
The debris is zen.
There’s artless beauty here.
I’m happy to be marooned here.
Camera: Contax TVS II
Film: Venus 800
We’re all very space conscious in Hong Kong.
Everyone is watchful.
Are windows for looking in or looking out?
We’re mindful of where not to go.
We know where we are at all times.
Even nature has discipline.
A tree bends to seek a path.
A home is both inside and outside.
Storage space is outside.
A home is a store.
Camera: Contax TVS II
Film: Venus 800
Mention Hong Kong and you would think of skyscrapers, crowded streets, and the wonderful dimsum.
But there’s a quieter, meditative side to Hong Kong as well.
You could find scenes like these…
These are the views you get if you’re willing to live in somewhat out-of-the-way village houses.
These are really quiet, meditative spots.
If you’re willing to live near a farm…
And this, too, is an environment where we could live with ourselves…
Thanks for reading!
I’m planning to use the following quote for a talk on poetry and photography for fellow writers.
It’s from Zygmunt Bauman, a sociologist who has written on what he calls “liquid modernity”. This passage from his book The Art of Life is relevant to those who are on the quest for meaning:
To practise the art of life, to make one’s life a “work of art”, amounts … to being in a state of permanent transformation, to perpetually self-redefine through becoming … someone other than one has been thus far. (The Art of Life 73)
I now have the habit of bringing along one or two film cameras wherever I go. It’s usually a Leica M6, paired with either a Yashica GX, Canonet QL 17 Giii or more recently, the Olympus XA2.
The Olympus XA2 is really stealthy because of zone-focusing. And it’s really quiet too. For example, I could do this in a cab without the driver noticing:
Try that with a Canon 5D Mark III.
Part of my fascination with film cameras has to do with their longevity – digital cameras either go out of fashion or break down after 3-5 years (though it has to be said that my Canon G11 is still going strong). The Olympus XA2 was made in the 1980s, which means the thing in my hand is about 30 years old.
I guess I am now using my cameras as a sketchbook of sorts, storing material for writing and thinking. This is probably a little too deliberate, but I think of this as pushing myself beyond what I am, “becoming someone other than one has been thus far”, asking street photography to teach me to be a better writer and thinker.
For now, the art of life for me is about storing moments which might otherwise seem artless.
Lately, I have begun to take pictures with only my eyes, imagining what a scene would look like on a photograph… click… click…
And I like this quote from William Todd Schultz, who wrote An Emergency in Slow Motion: The Inner Life of Diane Arbus, a wonderful psychobiography of Arbus:
Artists aren’t always in complete command of their material. Sometimes it commands them and they let it; they get out of the way, the subject matter comes unbidden, it compels them and they follow its lead.
This might be a careless comparison, but Arbus is to photography what Sylvia Plath is to poetry.
And as for material for the street photographer, there’s often poetry to be found in places you least expect, which is why that tiny Olympus XA2 is so handy:
The above is just next to where I live, a plot of land on which a small shopping mall is being built. *sigh*
I’m always fascinated by how one could be in a built-up area in Hong Kong, and after walking for 20 minutes, be in the midst of idyllic village houses where clothes are hung in open air and kitchens are next to public walkways:
And then, 10 minutes later, one is at the beach.
And you would come across scenes like this:
This is Wu Kai Sha beach, and there’re now plans for land reclamation in the area which would mean the beach would be no more… *another sigh*
Thanks for reading.
Photography is … visual. That much is obvious. As a published poet and literature professor, I’m supposed to be able to convey ideas with words but what happens when something is a visual idea?
This would take us from visual to verbal to visual again. And the first and last visual may not be the same, even though we’re talking about the same photograph.
I look and look and understand how a photograph works, but I’ve yet to properly learn how to say why it works and why I enjoy it.
Photography has made me rethink some of those things to do with literature that I’ve forgotten. Of course, the experience of a literary work is not the same thing as a book review or a scholarly paper.
The experience … the experience … the horror … the horror … the “oomph” … it starts with the experience, and sometimes I feel like all one has to do is to read and look and be quiet. That was the experience of reading in my youth which put me on the path of academia.
The subjective “oomph” comes first. All the bits about literary/intellectual history, the meaning of meaning and so on, comes after.
This explains why my colleagues down the corridor could spend so much time on books that I genuinely find boring and pointless … and of course, vice versa.
Anyway, back to what is visual “oomph”, at least for me:
That’s the Leisure and Cultural Services Headquarters at Shatin. Perhaps this is what the Ministry of Truth looks like in Orwell’s 1984.
The mini-bus and high-rise apartment buildings. So very Hong Kong. This is at the elevated bus interchange just outside New Town Plaza, the hard-to-miss shopping mecca at Shatin.
Walk down the sloped pavement by the side onto ground level and you’ll see an entire length of village houses, some of which have been converted into eateries.
That’s just below the bus interchange, right next to more mini-bus terminal stops. I like the different greys of the pavement…
Yet another village house … with a gothic feel.
All these images are taken from within 200-300 metres. That’s how packed Hong Kong is. Keep in mind this is the urbanised area of the New Territories, third in line in terms of urban development, coming after the Kowloon/Tsim Sha Tsui areas and the Central/Wanchai areas on Hong Kong Island.
Thanks for reading.
Hong Kong Lucida 