Photographs Are Forever

In 1958, the Perulz Photo Contest organised by the New Evening Post announced grand prizes that included a Rolleicord and a Zeiss 6x6 cm medium-format film camera. Chung pawned his prized possession in order to develop film. “My mother was fuming,” Stanley Chung says. “Cameras and films were a luxury and we had been struggling to make ends meet. Luckily, my grandfather worked in a restaurant and allowed my mother to take some dim sum home to keep the family from starving.”

And to their relief, Chung won the award and prizes. He made contacts within the photography team at the Hong Kong Chinese Reform Association, a political organisation that organised social events for locals, and learnt how to develop photos in a darkroom. Chung became obsessed with the qualities that darkroom printing could achieve. “My father used to squat in the bathroom, which he converted into a darkroom, and I would keep nudging impatiently and asking: ‘Is it ready yet?’,” his son says.

In the following decades, until his retirement in 1991, Chung documented Hong Kong’s urban evolution through candid, black-and-white photographs. His subjects were diverse—post-war livelihoods, festivals, housing and various industries, such as transportation, fishing and catering. His photo of a woman sat by a standpipe waiting for her bucket to fill during rationing, a period when freshwater was only available for two hours per day, won him the silver prize in 1959 at the Hong Kong International Salon of Photography, Hong Kong’s most prestigious photography competition, which was judged by the Photographic Society of America.

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In contrast with his contemporaries, such as famed photographer and Chung’s friend Fan Ho, who tended to add drama to his shots, Stanley Chung says that his father’s style was more realistic. “Uncle Ho’s images are more dramatic and cinematic,” he says. “He sometimes tipped a child to buy a candy to stage a scene or a rickshaw driver to pull his cart a little closer to where he wanted to shoot for a better angle. My father couldn’t afford that.”

Instead, Chung adds, “My father’s photos have educational and historical value. These sights have long disappeared. A lot of buildings have been demolished.” Douglas So, the chairman of the Antiquities Advisory Board and founder of F22 Foto Space, says Chung’s photos helped bring the city’s historic architecture to life. “These classic structures don’t guarantee good photos,” says So. “Chung was an illustrator, and he already had the images in his mind before he pressed the shutter.”

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Father-And-Son Legacy

“He was very particular about lighting and angles,” says his son, who used to tag along on shoots. “Sometimes my father would wait for the whole day without taking one picture, and he would come back another day to the same spot to wait for the decisive moment.”

So curated the exhibition with rare images that show Chung’s personality as a photographer and his two distinct ways of working: as both artist and historian. “Chung’s commissioned photos are more for documenting history, whereas those taken as a hobby are more artistic,” So says. “For example, in 1962’s New Frontier, the pattern of the lampposts in Kwun Tong exudes a romantic vibe that isn’t usually associated with the place.” Following the F22 show, So will stage a larger retrospective at F11 Foto Museum. 

Now also a photographer himself, Stanley Chung has worked as an artistic designer for local newspaper Wen Wei Po and a lecturer at the First Institute of Art and Design in Tai Hang. He also runs a darkroom in North Point, where he prints all his father’s photos using the films and notebooks he inherited, making the shows a collaboration across generations. So says: “In a sense, this isn’t only James’s exhibition. It’s an exhibition by a father-and-son duo. It’s Hong Kong’s legacy.”

Long Shadow runs from October 16 to January 31, 2021 at F22 Peninsula; Retrospective of James Chung is scheduled to run from February 16, 2021 to May 15, 2021 at F11 Foto Museum. Please visit f22.com and f11.com for the latest updates

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