Often called the “poet with a camera, or “the grandmaster,” Ho Fan (b. 1937 in Shanghai) is often called the “poet with a camera, or “the grandmaster”. His street scenes and photomontages of the 1950s and ‘60s left their marks on the minds of several generations. Considered to be one of the masters of black-and-white photography, Ho Fan is also an accomplished actor and filmmaker, having produced over 20 films in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The poetic grandeur and dramatic power of his photographs have earned him over 200 prizes over the course of his long career, which began in 1956.
Ho Fan’s expressionist and experimental photographs not only capture street life in Hong Kong from the 1950 to the present. They also explore topics in the Asian tradition of painting, like shanshui (a Chinese word for traditional landscape painting), abstracts and nudes. Distancing himself from “pure photography,” the artist plays with shapes and compositions, deliberately distorting silhouettes, accentuating areas of shadow and light, combining multiple negatives, altering the perspective, and many other tricks. Whether they are in black-and-white or (more rarely) color, all of Ho Fan’s photographs explore ideas of theatricality, consciously or unconsciously creating a surrealist city, one with ill-defined boundaries and many faces.
Ho Fan holds a special place both in the history of Hong Kong photography and in the history of the gallery itself, The AO Space also called the vertical gallery sarted by Peter Lau which held in 2012, shortly after its opening, the first Hong Kong retrospective of Ho Fan’s work. Although the gallery exhibiting mainly (although not exclusively) the work of Chinese photographers, they all focus on the city of Hong Kong.
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil.
EXHIBITION
‘A Hong Kong Memoir’ by legendary Ho Fan
From October 31st 2014 to January 31st 2015
Ao Veritcal Art Space
c/o AO: The Photo Book Center
1-13/F, Asia One Tower
8 Fung Yip Street
Chai Wan, Hong Kong
