Kinetic City

Even as the ground shifts beneath our feet.

HK
2016—2017, 2024—2025
Photography (B/W) + Text
Contact for use.

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I’m across the road from the Mongkok Police Station, nursing a cold espresso, and bearing witness to time slipping by. The weather’s tuned into its pre-summer station, couples walk towards the flower market, a line of tourists snakes along the adjoining shopfronts, waiting for a table to open up at the dim sum place. The cyclone wiring atop the station’s wall glitters warmly in the sun. My leg is itchy, as is my shoulder. Something’s biting me as I sleep.

Lately, I’ve left the camera at home. My need to photograph is lessened. Instead, I write, archive, revisit, organise. I make connections between images taken years apart. It’s a process that suits me; I’m slow to realise things and ruminate often. This activity of placement and reflection reminds me of therapy. I draw parallels and think about the why of things. It takes time and goes at its own pace. As much as I would like to, I can’t speed this process up, which is frustrating in one sense, but it’s a familiar constant that I live alongside; it brings me comfort.

I witness my eye change over time. I ask myself questions. I’ve realised that the question is more essential than the answer within my practice. Perhaps this is an aspect of my latent Catholicism seeping through, a spiritual concern that’s easy with questions and not always forthcoming with answers.

I circle specific lines of thought. What’s really involved in the act of looking? What does it mean for my gaze to be non-local? How does one photograph a place like Hong Kong, not as representation, but to think through it? Is a photograph ever not exploitative? What responsibilities do I have as one holding the camera, and where do they end?

My practice attempts to live with these questions. An ongoing work in progress. Much like anything else in this world.

The photographs here span two separate two-year periods in Hong Kong, seven years apart.

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