Littoral Tension
The project is to express the feeling to the changes of the Hong Kong society. I explore it through a series of landscape photographs that depict the reservoirs those were built by the British before they left the colony, and use the edge of the reservoir as the metaphor to the tension caused by the changes after the place was returned China for more than 20 years.
Robert Adams, one of the New Topographics photographers, wrote in “Truth in Landscape” about three ‘verities’ of landscape photograph: geography, autobiography, and metaphor. He said “Geography is, if taken alone, sometimes boring, autobiography is frequently trivial and metaphor can be dubious. But taken together, as in the best work of people like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, the three kinds of information strengthen each other and reinforce what we all work to keep intact – an affection of life.”
In this project:
Geography
The reservoirs of Hong Kong has their function for water supply which is related to the daily life of Hong Kong people and its historical meaning as they were all built during the colonial period
Autobiography
Me as a Hong Kong People expressing my feelings towards the recent changes of social condition and the longing for the old way of living in colonial period.
Metaphor
The tension caused by the change of returning Hong Kong to China currently appears in the society. The edge of the reservoir is used as a metaphor to symbolize it.
This series is mainly to photograph the shoreline or edge of the 9 Hong Kong reservoirs which are still functioning now. The shorelines have different shapes and forms. The shoreline is shaped by erosion of water or wind or other natural agents, just like the social and political forces that shape the society.