HKFP Lens: Hong Kong through the eyes of photojournalist Wong Kan

Hong Kong’s recently-opened Galerie artellex is hosting an exhibition this month featuring selected works by local veteran photojournalist Wong Kan-tai.

The Diana & The Queen’s photo exhibition opened at the beginning of March at the small-scale gallery space based in Lai Chi Kok, which focuses on photography and illustrative arts. Pieces on display were curated from Wong’s latest photobook Diana Hong Kong 2014released last December and another collection, The Queen’s, published in 2017.

The well-respected documentary photographer began his career as a breaking news journalist in the late 1970s and studied photography in Tokyo, Japan, in the early 1980s.

Scenes from Hong Kong included the infamous Kowloon Walled City, as well as Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the city.

Wong wrote a poem for the photos chosen from this collection in the exhibition:

The old film still emits the smell of fixer chemical,
It is the clumsiness of youth, as well as the traces of the hurried career of a photojournalist.”

“From the overwhelmed sea of Vietnamese refugees’ boats in Green Island waterway in the seventies,
To the sounding of HMS Tamar’s retreat in 1997……

“When Kan-tai first picked up the camera to take pictures, it was purely for the needs of a photojournalist. Over the years, the monochrome photos he took were also naturally composed with different motives and journeys,” the gallery said in a statement.

Wong’s other published works included 89′ Tiananmen, Hong Kong Walled City 2002~2007, Vajrayana, The Queen’s, Fukushima, Secret 1842~1997, Xinjiang 1980and Bardo Hong Kong 2019. Some of his photos are in the Hong Kong Heritage Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art collections.

Exhibition: Diana & The Queen’s
Venue: Galerie artellex, Unit 204A, 2/F, Sun Cheong Industrial Building, 2-4 Cheung Yee Street, Kowloon (entrance on Cheung Shun Street)
Time: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, closed Mondays, until March 31
Admission: Free