Hong Kong’s Blue Lotus Gallery is launching a new “HK UNSEEN” exhibition to showcase the city’s “golden age” captured by Canadian photographer Greg Girard, who spent the 1980s roaming its streets.
“I first visited Hong Kong in 1974, and made several subsequent visits before moving to the city in 1982, and based until 1998,” said the photographer, who arrived for the first time at the age of 18 on a freighter from San Francisco.
“Most of the photographs were made before I became a professional photographer, and they show the Hong Kong I explored without any thought to how the pictures might be seen or where they might end up.”
The exhibition features glimpses of Hong Kong through Girard’s lens that have never been displayed before. Jam-packed trams, an ocean of neon signs, passenger jets that skimmed low over Kowloon and a busy bar in Wan Chai – the organisers hope the showcase will “transport [viewers] back to the 80s, reliving the memories of times now long gone.”
“Like any ‘golden age’ you don’t realise you were living in it until much later,” said Girard. “Perhaps the 1980s were special because popular culture, particularly the films but also the music, played such a huge role in defining what Hong Kong was at the time.”
HK UNSEEN begins on November 10 and runs until December 11 at Blue Lotus Gallery as part of the HKIPF Satellite Exhibition 2021. The gallery will hold a Zoom talk with Girard on November 27.
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