DOUBLE DOUBLE
Writings/ Photographs/ Poetry/ Archives
A Holly Lee and Lee Ka-sing online magazine. Published on Fridays. 李家昇黃楚喬網上雜誌，逢星期五出版
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RECENT WOK (1)
Poem by Holly Lee
(2017)
A Potluck Song (To celebrate Ka Tai and Rebecca's arrival in Toronto after debarking from a cargo ship in Trinidad, Port of Spain.)
lunch time munching the leftover
I'm multi-tasking checking another guest arriving tomorrow
friends thank you for your lovely cooking my mouthful
of wind-dried tomatoes
not forgetting kimchi pancakes from Yosh
I take you all at Gladstone 50 last night mostly vegetarians :)
so the five-spiced duck Kai made
left enough to fill our tonight's stomach
(where have all the good squids gone, Tomio?)
Vik your potato apple salad is as vicious as your food jokes
marinated eggs, moon cake with single yoke,
Hami melon, red wine and sake
all you green salad all you cumin rice
intoxicating
drowning
in Stella's singing
one day when we were young
let's stuff the night into my transparent belly
let's put me out to sea
let's imagine the face of the person
to him I will say
I am a bottle
I am a hundred years old
I carry with me a poem
and seafaring stories
and a hot hot fever
for my kindreds' return
RECENT WORK (2)
Lee Ka-sing - a work from the MOBILE POETRY LAB series.
The Psychological Journey While Taking a Colour Photograph of a Dinosaur 為恐龍拍攝一幀彩色照片的心路歷程 (2012)
Pine wood, archival inkjet print on paper, acrylic medium
1243mm x 86mm x 35mm, edition 2/5
ARTIFACT
"camera works, holly & wingo" - the two-person exhibition, Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1981
We had our first major exhibition in 1981 since we have started up the photography studio in 1977. The publicity materials for the exhibition, including invitation card, poster and a large format exhibition brochure, were designed by Wong Kin-ho and Li Kam-fai of the Illustration Workshop. This was a layout sketch by Kin-ho. Our portrait was photographed by Leong Ka Tai.
Invitation card, front and verso
Exhibition brochure, 11.5"x17", 20 pages
「假想，攝影可以是一篇文字。生活在你面前的一條魚。一首詩。送給你的朋友。遞給他一杯牛奶。祝福她。
一面昇起的旗對你說，早晨。今天陽光真好。一把平靜的傘。曾經撑起過一千個雨天的故事。他們都這樣這樣的橫臥在你的面前。我選擇的是每天常用的攝影和視覺方法。燈光和結構。不同的只是旗子可以在風中燃燒著一個陽光燦爛的早晨。傘子可以不斷不斷張開自己的故事。
其實技巧和畫面都不是那麼重要的問題。每人都生活在生活裡。你不裝飾别人的房子，卻裝飾了別人的空間。」(李家昇, 1981)
「當一個人站在你的面前，你的鏡頭只是一隻眼睛，凝固的影像會是一些怎樣的風景。
沒有人會害怕眼睛。我努力地把鏡頭變成眼睛，這樣，人可以拼棄一切的裝飾，拘謹，悠然自得地談笑起來。這是一面看不到的自己。凝固的影像卻告訴了很多，這個人的性情，身分。或許，他甚至站了出來，說我就是我。
我的人像照片，人是重心，也成為構圖的一部分。我喜愛形象和這片白色空間所扣成的關係。我喜愛照片中的人物，他們都是我所熟悉的，或仰慕的人物。我喜愛每一次拍攝過程，是獨一無二的一次交通。他們的豐富生命力也豐富了我的照片 - 我的朋友，藝術家及其他。」(黃楚喬, 1981)
The above texts were reprinted from the "camera works, holly & wingo" exhibition brochure. In the next issue of DOUBLE DOUBLE we will publish a body of vintage photographs from Holly's portrait series "Pictures of Friends, Artists and People I Know 我的朋友，藝術家及其他".
EARLY WORK (1)
Photographs by Lee Ka-sing
Two works from a series of still life photographs on personal things.
“camera works, holly & wingo” exhibition, 1981
同志你好 tong zhì ni hao, 1980
This is Not an Apple (after Magritte), 1980
In the exhibition, photographs were printed on 20"x24" paper, chromogenic prints. Most of the vintage prints from this series were lost or damaged. Selected images were now released as new limited editions in format of 17”x22”. In 2017, an edition of “ This is Not an Apple” was acquired by the M+ Museum.
EARLY WORK (2)
Photographs by Lee Ka-sing
Two works from a series of photographs of China.
“camera works, holly & wingo” exhibition, 1981
Both photographs were taken in Guilin in 1980. Some of the works in that series were later included in the IMAGES OF CHINA BY HONG KONG PHOTOGRAPHERS (香港攝影家看中國), Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1984, an exhibition curated by Michael Chen.
The girl in red stockings, 1980
Boy with red scarf, 1980
PAPER TALK
(Top) Photo by Holly Lee. Bowl from the Both Sides Now series, 2014. 5x7 inch. Archival pigment print.
(Bottom) Photo by Lee Bo-Kam (Ka-sing's father). Circa early 70’s. 5x7 inch. Chromogenic print.
Bowlshit
written by Holly Lee
Lake Bright Mountain Colour (LBMC): So I heard you are sold for $10,800. That's amazing.
White Jade (WJ): The estimate auction price was from $8,000 to $12,000. Taken my value, which I strong believe they have underestimated, I should be well over the price range.
LBMC: That's better than nothing. At least you are well taken care of. Look at that beautiful glass case of yours, and the soft black velvet you are lying on. That spot light picking up all your glamours chrysanthemum, lotus and cloud patterns. I really envy that.
WJ: But you see, I was finely hand-carved in low relief, with rolls and flows of angelic hairlines. Besides, I am Qing Dynasty old, with a Qianlong mark to the base. How could they not taken these into consideration?
LBMC: Oh well, you were definitely born in a different time, a family member in the royal kitchen. Even though I've become almost 'antique' now, I belong to a different class, the class of the common people. As a wedding gift, I was once celebrated, used and then broken. Now I can only sit among other bowls on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet, never to see sunlight, never to meet admiring eyes, never to be even 'used' again.
WJ: I hear ye I hear ye. You are lucky still at least to have some companions. I am locked in this glass prison, and there are plenty of them here. How do I compete for attention? I'd rather go back to the royal kitchen, then I would have a better chance of serving the Emperor, to be in his loving hands. I don't mind even if I fall into the hands of his concubine, I mean his most beloved one, as long as I could escape this cold and boring prison.
LBMC: Yes, sadly. We are imprisoned, captives in another time. Unlike our human beings, who will be saying they have a long life when they live up to their nineties. Our kind is almost immortal, some of our ancestors live up to thousands of years, though they may be reduced to a limb or a toe. By the way, there is another truth. Our cheap siblings, our plastic half-brothers and sisters, they are so indestructible! They are not as organic as we but they can live up to a thousand years, with all their toxicity.
WJ: They are worst than shits!
THINGS + OBJECTS
學生手冊 School Handbook (logbook) 1961 (work 1980)
(a photograph from “camera works, holly & wingo” exhibition)
I was born in Hong Kong and lived with my uncle (father's elder brother) in Guangzhou since two years old. In 1962 I returned to Hong Kong to continue my school education. This school handbook issued in China served as a document for my identity, while I was crossing the country borders.
OP EDITION
Leong Ka Tai
Untitled 950132 (work year - circa 80's)
8"x10", chromogenic photograph (printed in 1995)
OP Edition, with "OP editions" blind-stamp
Edition 5/20, signed and numbered on verso
See more information about this work
OP editions are limited edition photographs from the OP Print Program we organized since 1995. After we moved to Toronto, the Program was still in operation for the first five years. Over hundreds of artists have been included, with photographs released as small format limited editions, in 8”x10” fibre-based black and white or chromogenic colour photographs. We plan to publish here, a selection from the collection on a weekly basis.
H+K COLLECTION
Nobuyoshi Araki
photograph from EROTO series (1993)
20"x24" fibre-based gelatin silver print, signed on verso
VINTAGE
Photogram by Holly Lee
雲咸街69號的一點回憶 Ka-sing and Holly (work 1991)
Ilfochrome, 11.25"x16"
This original photogram was shown among a series of Holly's photographs on family portraits, at RESTRICTED EXPOSURE, an exhibition organized by the Hong Kong Fringe Club at City Hall in 1996. The exhibition showcased a number of Hong Kong artists, whose work was in the sense of 'private'. A related book PRIVATE CONTENT: PUBLIC VIEW edited by Eric Wear and Lisa Cheung was published in 1997.
In 2015, this image was shown again, as an enlarged archival inkjet print, in pairing with a black and white digitally constructed photograph "We knew each other since tender age" in DUOS /TRIOS, a solo exhibition at GALLERY 50 in Toronto.
Quoted from the artist statement, DUOS /TRIOS, 2015: "Cameraworks, Holly & Wingo - I used materials from our exhibition catalogue (1981) to recreate a new work, a constructed photogram on Cibachrome paper. Towards the 90s, as computer became more capable, it was not painstaking to fabricate pictures like We knew each other since tender age."
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DOUBLE DOUBLE
Issue 0125-2019
A Holly Lee and Lee Ka-sing online magazine. Published on Fridays.
Published by Ocean and Pounds and archived at oceanpounds.com
All rights Reserved.
Selective items in this publication are available at the OCEAN POUNDS online shop. For items featured in CURRENT WORK, VINTAGE, ARTIFACT, PUBLICATION, OBJECT, BOOKSCAPE and COLLECTION, please send a request to: mail@oceanpounds.com.
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DOUBLE DOUBLE previous issues were archived at -
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leekasing.com is a portal website for current and earlier works. Apart from exhibitions, Holly and Ka-sing use extensively web platforms to display photography and writing projects. Contact us for a detail list of links.
Holly and Ka-sing currently live in Toronto with their daughter Iris, and their cat Sukimoto.
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