DIGI, Vol. 1 #1 (January 25, 1994), 8.5x11 inch, 16 pages.
Talking Head Issue. Artists: Ka-Sing Lee, Chiu-Ping Ku, Tommy K.F. Li, Dean Morris, Holly Lee, Eric Chan, Shuk-Man Ho, Camay Wong, Iris Lee, David Lui. Cover by Ka-sing Lee.
DIGI, Vol. 1 #2 (February 25, 1994), 8.5x11 inch, 16 pages.
Sur•reality Issue, Artists: Chiu-Ping Ku 辜昭平, Tommy K. F. Li 李錦煇, an interview with Ryszard Horowitz by Holly Lee. Cover by David Lui.
Both Chiu-Ping Ku and Tommy Li were illustrators, and members of the notable Illustration Workshop - the first influential graphic design studio from Hong Kongers in the 80s. Chiu-Ping Ku, notably one of the pioneers in digital imaging in Hong Kong, was technical-based and majored in 3-D rendering. Tommy K.F. Li (1954-2016) moved to Toronto in the early nineties and continued to work in paper sculpture as his illustration style. His fond of classical music had inspired him for the work in this issue.
Ryszard Horowitz is one of the professional photographers we admire. He’s a wizard juggling several balls and amazes you when those balls turned into birds and butterflies. In the early nineties he was one of the first photographers that could achieve images virtually impossible, walking the lines between analog and digital, he’d reached the point that what’s conceivable is attainable. We knew of his work since the early 70s, through magazines and publications, where he was widely publicized. Before electronic imaging his work was already surreal, bold and eye-popping. We had a chance to meet in 1993 when he was invited to an exhibition and a series of seminars entitled “Photographer in Computerland” held at the Hong Kong Convention Centre. We grasped the chance to meet him, and featured the interview in the second issue of DIGI.
DIGI, Vol. 1 #3 (April 25, 1994), 8.5x11 inch, 16 pages.
Symmetrical Aesthetics (對稱美學) Issue. Artists: Ho-Sang Wong 黄豪生 (Macau), Lau Ching-Ping 劉清平. Essay: Metabolism of Photographic truth in the digital age by Charles H. Traub. Cover by Ka-sing Lee.
In this issue, both Ho-Sang Wong and Lau Ching-Ping used Mac IIci and Photoshop to produce their work. We invited Charles H. Traub to write an essay for us. He was the Chairperson, M.F.A. Photo and Related Media, School of Visual Art, New York.
DIGI, Vol. 1 #4 1994, 8.5x11 inch, 16 pages.
Magic Hour Issue. Artists: Lewis Fishauf, Tandoori Yokoo, Pierre et Gals, Robert Roschenberg, Garbo & George, Yuki Tokoro, Rom Chan. (with apologies to Louis Fishauf, Tadanori Yokoo, Pierre et Gilles, Robert Rauschenberg, Gilbert & George, Yukinori Tokoro, Ron Chan). Essay by Blues Wong: In Search of Duchamp’s Power PC: The works of art in the age of digital simulation. Cover by Chiu-Ping Ku.
This issue was fun, but more importantly it was about appropriation, in which David Lui, Ka-Sing, Holly and Tommy Li, each chose one noted artist and appropriated their work (using slightly altered names). The interesting thing is, after Ka-Sing and I moved to Toronto, we actually met Louis Fishauf, the celebrated illustrator from the famous Reactor Studio, and whose work The Everyman Project we eventually featured in our gallery in 2011.
DIGI, Vol. 1 #5 1994, , 8.5x11 inch, 16 pages.
Flower Bird Insect Fish Issue. Artists: Yuri Numata, Wucius Wong 王無邪, Ka-Sing Lee, Alexander H. Shing, Goto Hiroshi, Yvonne Lo 盧婉雯, Eva Sutton, Ching-Ping Lau, Osamu Sato, Camay Wong. Cover by David Lui. Realism in Rocks and Trees, an excerpt from On Painting by Chiang-wo (Ching Dynasty, around 1820), translated by Patrick Lee.
A special issue featuring works grounded from traditional Chinese paintings. A number of overseas artists contributed to this issue. Each artist was supplied with an image of a traditional Chinese painting, based on this painting and worked on a new work. I was able to invite Wucius Wong, a Hong Kong painter (relocated to New Jersey by that time) who has been noted for his Chinese water-ink landscape from the 70s, to recreated a new digital landscape from an old Chinese painting. With the same painting as a reference point, The Tokyo-based Goto Hiroshi did something fresh and startling. From these works, the artist mind was revealed, the process and the way of applying new technology, the approach to establish a new work (also with very new tools) to reinterpret the old, all these different aspects were very intriguing.
DIGI, Vol. 1 #6 1994, 8.5x11 inch, 16 pages.
Neo-Drawing Issue. Artists: Hideaki Motoki, Ka-Sing Lee. Cover by David Lui.
Two different forms of digital drawing. The work on “organic engines” (a word I invented) by Hideaki Motoki is simply fascinating. It is utterly artificial, yet revealing the artist’s and the computer’s mind are communicating, trying to speak the same language, and merging into one. Lee Ka-Sing employed another approach. He was using the lowest capacity of the computer, but the highest capacity of his brain. The hybridity of his work is still replete with human touch.
DIGI, Vol. 1 #7 1994, 8.5x11 inch, 16 pages.
Sphere Issue. Artists: Stewart Zief, Leo Chan, Robert Bowen, Kevin Suffern, Hiroshi Yoshii, Hideaki Motoki, Angela Perkins, Chiu-Ping Ku, Katsuhiko Hibino. Poem: Sphere. Several imperfectly metered phrases reminiscent of the strange algorithms governing life by Sonya Shannon. Cover by Hermann Rüegg.
A special issue dedicated to the sphere form. Nine artists of differing nationalities participated, exploring this theme by computation, to dig into the form its many visual possibilities. Sonya Shannon (USA), one of the forerunners of computer graphics, contributed a poem contemplating on this shape.
DIGI, Vol. 2 #1 1995, 8.5x11 inch, 16 pages.
Judgement Issue. Artist: Daniel Lee. Poem: I’m too busy by Patrick Lee. Cover by Ka-Sing Lee.
Daniel Lee was born in Chungking, China and grew up in Taiwan. He studied photography in the US and worked as an art director and later became a professional photographer in New York City. We met him around 1994 and were immediately entranced by his work, especially the series of portrait he’d just finished on the theme of reincarnation and judgement. We devoted a whole issue to feature his portraits, and in parallel we invited Patrick Lee, another Hong Kong photographer, to write a poem - a conversation with God, to go with this issue.
DIGI, Vol. 2 #2 1995, 8.5x11 inch, 16 pages.
101 Mona Lisa: CyberLouvre version.
A compilation of 101 digital works based on the image of Mona Lisa by international artists. Cover by Ka-Sing Lee.
She is the world’s most famous face. The most borrowed, used, copied, appropriated. Here we committed another offense, to use her face again. A hundred faces of Mona Lisa bloomed, morphed, glorified, mocked, transcended but mostly scrutinized. The effort in this issue showed a kaleidoscope of mind exercises.
DIGI, Vol. 2 #3 1995, 8.5x11 inch, 16 pages.
Unique EditionsX Issue. Artists: Dorothy Simpson Krause, Bonny Lhotka, Helen Golden, Karin Schminke, Judith Moncrieff. Cover by Holly Lee.
I met Dorothy Simpson Krause in Boston in the latter part of 1994, and learned that she and some other artists had formed Unique EditionsX - a group of artists who combined their expertise with computers and traditional art making techniques to produce editions of multiple originals from digital files. I was obviously interested and suggested to feature work from Unique EditionsX members in a future issue of DIGI. Dorothy was excited about the proposal and helped us to organize the work, which was put together in one issue with the group’s name.
DIGI, Vol. 2 #4 1995, 8.5x11 inch, 16 pages.
NeXtstop Issue. Artists: Chiu-Ping Ku, Ka-Sing, David Lui, Holly Lee. Cover by Ka-sing Lee collaborated with Iris Lee.
An issue featured selected work from the exhibition NeXtstop, a digital art exhibition by four artists held at Agfa Gallery, Goethe Institut, Hong Kong.
DIGI, Vol. 2 #5 1995, 8.5x11 inch, 16 pages.
Works by Steve Bliss & Alan Magee. Cover by Alan Magee.
In August 1995 I was in a three-day workshop conducted by Alan Magee taken place in CCI (the Center of Creative Imaging) in camden, Maine. Alan Magee was a noted painter in the realistic tradition, during that time he also ventured into digital imaging, mostly collages. He had finished a series of portraits related to artists, mostly writers, painters and I loved the surreal yet poetic quality of the work. Eventually I arranged to feature a selection of the portrait work along with the bodywork from Steve Bliss, an artist and professor of Photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design. The issue turned out to be an interesting juxtaposition.
DIGI, Vol. 2 #6 1996, 8.5x11 inch, 16 pages.
Shan Hai Jing Issue. Artists: Vasani Nayak, Hermann Rüegg, Pamela Hobbs, Sukit Punnachaiya, Wong Siu-Ka, Tadanori Yokoo, Holly Lee, Pito Collas. Cover by Ku Chiu-Ping. Design by Anothermountainman.
How do you decode a legend? Shan Hai Jing, literally translated as Compendium of Mountains and Seas, is ancient Chinese literature blending geography with mythology. One could take it word for word, and stun you with a human heart that is still beating, one could plainly grab some contents, and illustrated a landscape with inhabitants partly human partly beast; one could view it with obstruction, an uncertain place denial of entry, or one could approach it with a cosmic idea, it is everything and everywhere, while another could give you a slight slap in the face - here are the mountains and their algorithm. All is well, now we can start a conversation.
DIGI annual, Volume 1 and Volume 2
Cover jacket with image by Lee Ka-sing
DOUBLE DOUBLE
A Holly Lee and Lee Ka-sing online magazine
Published on Fridays since January 2019
李家昇黃楚喬網上雜誌,逢星期五出版
Writings/ Photographs/ Poetry/ Archives
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The Tempestuous Life of a gallery
written by Holly Lee
A photograph of the Candy Factory Lofts taken in 2021, looking across from the north side of Queen Street West. From the main entrance and after climbing a flight of stairs, the previous LEE KA-SING gallery was situated at the first unit on the right.
Sweet Halloween to Sweet Home (Lee Ka-Sing Gallery 2000-2005)
I first saw the name Candy Factory Lofts in the real estate page, from either the Globe & Mail or the Toronto Star. It was a big advertisement, selling the candy factory as a converted loft, a six-storeys post and beam condo that would generate 121 spectacular suites. Located downtown on Queen Street West, though still close to the centre, it was quite a few blocks west of Bathurst street - an area considered at that time shady, and a bit off the grid. When I mentioned this location to my friend, who’d lived in Toronto for almost ten years, he advised me to stay away. In fact my friend lived in Markham, a city of the Greater Toronto Area, where we also set foot after arriving in 1997. We always thought we lived in Toronto - yes, but in the GTA, and under the recommendation of our friend, in Markham. In the past we knew nothing about Toronto, except it was considered the largest, busiest and most populous in Canada. Out of ignorance we hardly knew Ontario. I came from a small city of six millions and my brain is always capsulized by the concept of small territory, compact, accessibility and high density. Ontario is huge, but downtown Toronto had only a million people, even if you add up the population from the Greater Toronto area, when we settled down in Markham in 1997, the number was still less than five million.
My curiosity of the lofts urged me take a slow trip by subway and then streetcar to Queen Street West. Not that bad really, by New York standard, we’d seen worse. Candy Factory Lofts was located just west of Trinity Bellwood Parks, a pretty calm area, I found not only the name sweet, the price of the converted lofts was also attractive. From our experience it’s not unusual for people to live in lofts in New York, in fact a few of our artist friends did, but we also knew the idea of “real” loft living was very new in Canada at that time, and this might be the beginning of such a trend that people would find exciting. And we certainly thought that, not just any people would love to live in lofts, but those who made an effort down to the open house that weekend, in late 1998, would be the kind with unrestrained character and venturous spirit, perhaps a bit like us?
LEE KA-SING gallery in 2000, looking out to Queen Street West.
After we acquired a small unit (the closest to the public stair exit), and hindered by several delays, we finally moved into the Candy Lofts. We used it as a photo gallery. It was just the millennium, but within a short few years we saw big changes. First the opening of the cool Drake Hotel on Valentine’s Day in 2004, followed by the art-teeming Gladstone Hotel. MOCCA, the former Art Gallery of North York relocated also to “Queen West” in 2005 and instantly became an art magnate. Suddenly the area where we moved into turned hustling and bustling, full of people visiting, eager to emerge and share a contemporary life of art and culture, with good wine and dine. The stretch from where we anchored kept shifting west, and came to be known as West Queen West - the fashion and art district in downtown Toronto, flourished with galleries, boutiques, Café, bars, designer stores. People came here to entertain, to gallery opening parties, to drink to socialize and to have fun. In fact, a decade-and-a-half ago Queen Street West was named by Vogue as one of the coolest streets in the world, and we were in the middle of it.
The transformation of Queen Street West, in retrospect, was the beginning of Toronto’s downtown housing market boom. Looking from another angle, it was also the gradual degradation of a once vibrant, multifaceted, invigorating neighbourhood to a maze of multi-storied, formulaic and disengaged condos. All it took was twenty years, we witnessed the so called gentrification as more developers scurried in to share the pie - and took away the buoyancy, the aesthetically stimulating character of the street.
In 2000 we launched our gallery on Queen Street West. It was one of the earliest, if not the earliest to operate in that area. Once a candy factory (Ce De Candy Factory 1963-1988) churning out the quintessential Halloween candy known as “Rockets”, the converted lofts now looked large and spectacular, with a soaring ceiling height from 12 to 14 feet, sand blasted exposed brick, plank hardwood floor, beams and columns and sleek finishes. Since the suites were designed like open studios, before we moved in we were allowed to make basic changes in the floor plan. I remember talking to the sales executive, someone who called Ann on the loft site. Laying down our floor plan on the marble-top kitchen island we penciled to reposition light tracks according to the need of our gallery. Apart from that we didn’t change much. Our loft was on the first floor, the smallest unit in the building occupying a little under 900 square feet. The day we moved in we were totally awestruck by the beautiful finishing, the exposed original brick wall, the polished hard wood floor, and the most impressive feature of the studio - the huge arch window opening to the Queen Street. Even though it was a double pane window, we could still hear the squealing cable cars running up and down the street.
When we moved into the loft we adhered a big vinyl lettering of OP fotogallery on the large window, but the building management forbade us doing it. By making use the family name, we decided to change the gallery name to LEE fotogallery. Ka-Sing hand-crafted a wooden sculpture of "L E E" and sat it on the window ledge. The sculpture, which could be read from both inside and outside, could then serve as a signage. In 2001, we decided to revise the name straightly to "LEE, KA-SING gallery", the "L E E" was still serving as a logo.
While running our gallery in the Candy Lofts we saw an influx of galleries along the West Queen West strip. From across our window operated Angell, Spin and New Gallery. To the west of Shaw Street was an important line up of Clint Roenisch, MOCCA, Edward Day, Stephen Bulgar and Paul Petro. Further west followed by KM Contemporary Art Projects (Katherine Mulherin first opened BUSgallery in Parkdale, later adding venues such as 1080BUS, BOARD OF DIRECTORS and some more others on Queen Street West). The long stretch of QSW carried on with more galleries, a mixed bag of commercial and artist-runs like Deleon White, Luft, Propeller, Zsa Zsa, InterAccess, 1313, Circa…and some others that I’d forgotten. And oh, I was just reminded that of a gargantuan 3,000-square-foot gallery/studio called the Thrush Holmes Empire at Queen and Dovercourt. Its splashy, red carpet style inaugural opening in 2007 created quite a stir.
We were in fact existing in the heyday of West Queen West, sharing part of its illustrious, over decade-long art activities and history.
For the first two years, we placed advertisements in PHOTOGRAPHY IN NEW YORK. PNY was a bimonthly guide publication for gallery goers and collectors, in which every issue covered a comprehensive listing of photography exhibitions in New York, as well as over a hundred photo exhibition ads. Every time when we visited New York it was our habit to grab a copy of PNY and used it like a bible to navigate the great number of photography exhibitions in the city.
A narrow window onto Asian photography
We opened City Detour, our inaugural exhibition in the Candy loft in February 2000. Connecting and acknowledging our roots from Hong Kong and Asia, we also aimed to bridge up activities from the Hong Kong gallery (OP fotogallery, partially supported by art funding) to the Toronto gallery - although totally self-financed, we still named it as OP fotogallery, Toronto. From the existing work of five photographers, we curated a show exploring the universal theme of city. How to define a city in visual terms, especially your city, in the context of being there, seeing and peeling the many layers off its core, tasting, nibbling different textures and in doing so, retelling the experiences through photography? In the exhibition there were four Hong Kong photographers: Patrick Lee, Malaysian Chinese, a medical practitioner who uses photography as his spiritual therapy; Ringo Tang, a talented commercial photographer showing strong tendency in pursuing fine art; Leung Chi-Wo, an active visual artist who had represented Hong Kong pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2001; Lee Ka-Sing, photographer and artist and one of the founders of DISLOCATION magazine in Hong Kong. The fifth photographer was Yao Jui-Chung, a Taiwanese artist who also represented Taiwan at the Venice Biennale in 1997. The scale of the exhibition was not large, but it had introduced to Toronto audience some of the movers and shakers in contemporary Hong Kong and Taiwanese art. From here, we were able to open up a small window to include distinguished Asian, especially Japanese, Chinese and Korean artists, such as Araki Nobuyoshi, Hideo Suzuki, Xing DanWen, Tseng Kwong-Chi and Park Hong-Chun. We felt glad that Asian contemporary photography, hot and much sought after in the established art world but largely unfamiliar to the Canadians, had finally made its presence in this multicultural city, little realizing that its voice had a hard time to be heard, and a market that was almost nonexistent.
CITY DETOUR, our inaugural exhibition in 2000. Work by Patrick Lee, Ringo Tang, Leung Chi-Wo, Lee Ka-Sing, Yao Jui-Chung.
Yao Jui-Chung (on left) in front of his photographs. Yao Jui-Chung's photo exhibition Savage Paradise was held in 2000, while we were still living in Markham. The night after the installation, we all went for dinner in a Chinese restaurant in Markham, where I parked my car right outside. After dinner getting back to our car we were alarmed that the car's window at the passenger's seat was broken, Yao's new cameras and my video camera were stolen at the same time. It was our carelessness despite warnings from our friends about keeping things that looked valuable out of sight when we left the car. To compensate Yao's loss, we proposed to purchase two of his large photographs, one of which featured a Sauroposeidon strolling in a deserted amusement park.
From Erotos to Obscenities
Erotos, an exhibition by Araki Nobuyoshi
Tseng Kwong-Chi 曾廣智 (1950-90) was active in the New York art scene in the 1980s, his circle of friends included Keith Haring and Cindy Sherman. The exhibition Citizen of The World was selected from his famous self-portrait series East meets West.
Apart from selling art, I guess our true nature is clinging closer to exploring and making inquiries into visual art, especially photography, its expression and development. One of the guide lines we took in the gallery was never shy away from showing works that were notably controversial and challenging. After Araki, we were able to work with Canadian photographers Diana Thorneycroft, P.E. Sharpe and Simon Glass. We’d also introduced Xing DanWen, her China Avant-Garde series, Hong Kong’s Almond Chu and Evangelo Costadimas - the latter EC is Canadian, moved to Hong Kong and produced evocative work. He is deeply inspired by Araki’s way to working.
Still-life: stilled lives, an exhibition by Diana Thorneycroft.
Quebec connection and International touch
When still in Hong Kong running NuNaHeDuo (DISLOCATION) and the OP Print Program, we came across many photographers from abroad, Serge Clément was one of them. A Canadian born in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, less than an hour’s drive to Montréal, he was our connection to other Montréal photographers such as Michel Campeau, Normand Rajotte and Bertrand Carrière. From the mid-nineties Serge Clément traveled to Hong Kong many times to explore and photograph the city, he was not an unfamiliar figure and had been considered one of the many local active photographers around that time. We featured his work in DISLOCATION and invited him into the OP Print Program. From photographs taken in Hong Kong and Shanghai between 1995 and 2002, he produced the book Parfum de Lumière / Fragrant Light in 2000, and a nine-minute animated version for the National Film Board of Canada (2002). When we set up the gallery in Toronto we wanted very much to exhibit his work, but he had already been represented by another gallery so it would be a conflict of interest. The 8 x 10 photographs in the OP Print Program were exempt from this rule as they were made outside of Canada. So fittingly we exhibited his work in the 810@LEE series, along with other artists who had committed to the OP Print Program.
In the early years of gallery practice, we were also keen to exhibit international photography. Our good fortune of meeting Laura Barrón led us to a stellar cast of other Mexican photographers, and as a result we were able to organize a show dedicated to Mexican Contemporary Photography in 2002. Later we also met and arranged shows for Sadegh Tirafkan (1965-2013), an Iranian well-known photographer who had produced profoundly beautiful work tightly-knit to Iran’s history, culture and politics. Our curiosity ushered us to explore further, to another unfamiliar territory like Poland, where we befriended the editor Ireneusz Zjezdzalka (1972-2008) of the Polish photo magazine Fotografia, and showed his black and white work in our gallery. With his help, we came to know a few more photographers; Patrycja Orzechowska, Pawel Zak, Wojciech Wilczyk and Jerzy Wierzbicki, all of whom I briefly wrote about in the October 2003 issue of FOTOPOST. Two years later, after the gallery had moved to Gladstone Avenue we were able to show a substantial body of Patrycja Orzechowska’s innovative and beautiful work during the photo month of CONTACT in 2007.
Seven Visions: Mexican Contemporary Photography (2002). Left: work by Hildegart Oloarte. Right: on brick wall were photographs by Laura Barrón.
New Voices from Toronto
We have always loved the energy and new perspectives a younger generation of photographers could bring. We explored the city through photography exhibitions in commercial galleries and artist-run centres and encountered a wide range of works. We met Jennifer Long, a young visual artist who obtained her BAA (Photographic Arts) at Ryerson University, and worked at Gallery 44 at that time. It was probably through Jennifer that we succeeded in organizing PUNCH in the Winter of 2002 - an exhibition of seven budding photographers, all of whom studied in the Ryerson University. The participates were Chris Curreri, John Fiorucci, Jennifer Long, Hugh Martin, Lindsay Page, Tim Saltarelli and Balint Zsako. We became so infatuated with the freshness of the work that we decided to produce PUNCH II in 2004, and subsequently, merely a few months after we’d relocated to 50 Gladstone, we put up the phenomenal PUNCH III in 2006 - filling all two floors with remarkable photographs by ten promising photographers. It was also after the first PUNCH exhibition that we approached Balint Zsako to represent his work, and organized the show Zsako vs Photography in the Fall of 2003.
PUNCH 2002. A postcard we produced to announce the exhibition.
PUNCH II (2004) A postcard we produced for the exhibition. At the back we announced the project of an E-Zine we were to publish for the photographers involved in the PUNCH exhibition.
Reaching out
Our gallery started to build bridges in as early as 2000. We reached out to the Japan Foundation Toronto (JFT) and co-presented with their gallery, which was then at Bloor Street West, to host the Japanese photographer Hideo Suzuki’s work. JFT had a huge gallery space and it could be partitioned into individual rooms for exhibitions, projections, seminars or other functions. Suzuki’s exhibition Family of Fantasy (May, 2000) comprised several bodies of work and in the end we had to take up most of the space. Advancing to 2002, Juno Youn, an artist and also a committee member of Gendai Gallery in Don Mills contacted us for organizing an exhibition of Araki’s work from our inventory. We had collaborated with them to present Erotos in their gallery.
Exhibition Invitation card by Gendai Gallery for Araki's show Erotos in 2002.
Amidst larger exhibitions we ran a smaller project called 810, showing photographs only in the size of 8 x 10 inch. We had a whole collection of OP Prints in this format and were still working with photographers to produce prints fit into this project. In our gallery, we used the rear portion, a little corner space to feature these works. We called it 810@LEE. Similarly, we exposed these works outside the gallery, in a furniture and interior design retail store called Fluid Living on Queen and Bathurst, and we called it 810@FluidLiving. Life was complicated knittings of big and small things. The next big thing we attempted was participating the Toronto Art Fair (2002). Exposure is the key to open more doors, more possibilities - but that does not necessary guarantee success.
Toronto Art Fair 2002 catalogue. LEE Ka-Sing Gallery featured two images inside the brochure - left: Diana Thorneycroft; right: Araki Nobuyoshi.
Smaller art fairs in alternative venues, such as hotels were all the rage in that era, and that spread over to Toronto in 2004, when the TAAFI Collective (Toronto alternative Art Fair International Collective ) kickstarted in October that year, almost around the time of the Toronto Art Fair. It used two hotels, The Drake and Gladstone and twenty two rooms to present art. Some rooms were rented as ‘booths’ to galleries while others were sponsored to show artists works. We participated this little event and transformed room 202 of the Drake Hotel into a makeshift gallery, displaying art in the sitting room, bathroom and on bed. The opening was jam-packed with people, the fair became the talk of the town, it went on for four days. We were excited and exhausted all the same, meeting and talking to fairly large number of people, and during the confusion, we became distracted and less watchful, as a result we turned out to be victim of the event - some of Simon Glass and Diana Thorneycroft’s 8 x10 inch prints were stolen in the opening night without knowing until the next day. Though very upset we considered that a good lesson learnt, hoping our ill fortune would stop there, it did not.
TAFFI 2004 at the Drake Hotel. We paid for a corner suite which had a sitting area, a bedroom and a shower room. Virtually every space was utilized to display artwork from the roster of artists we brought in. I remember P. Elaine Sharpe even attached a short fiction on the shower room's glass door.
It's time now to talk about another art fair, which took place south of the border. At the end of Summer in 2005, we laboured over two months to prepare for the Affordable Art Fair in New York. We paid for the fair and shipped all the artworks, even booked the hotel the fair organizer recommended. But the day we departed for New York we were stopped at the border, immigration won’t let us through because we were attending the art fair, which meant we were doing business in the United States. We didn’t know that we have to have a business partner in the US in order to participate the art fair, so we were sent back. It was a big blow, we felt demoralized for the rest of the month. The first opportunity to work internationally had vanished along with a big chunk of money. Was it human error or fate?
Perhaps it was both. But what we didn’t know was we were about to change, it was the harbinger of a brave new beginning, an audacious transformation, a herculean step away from our safe and comfort zone.
At one point, the failure to attend the art fair in New York had hastened us to hammer our decision of a significant move. We needed a place with greater visibility and more open access. It ended up in the Spring of 2006, despite all the obstacles, we managed to relocate our gallery a few more blocks west just before Dufferin street, to 50 Gladstone Avenue, where we continued to operate actively for the next twelve years.
At below: a seletion of posters we produced for publicity of our events. These posters were 12 by 18 inch, printed on photographic paper. Normally only one copy for each event was made.
An incomplete list of exhibitions from 2000 to 2005
Feb 1-Mar 4, 2000
City Detour (Inaugural Exhibition): Patrick Lee, Ringo Tang, Leung Chi-Wo, Lee Ka-Sing, Yao Jui-Chung
Mar 8-Apr 8, 2000
Hideo Suzuki: pater noster
Apr 12-May 6, 2000
Wong Hung-Fei: Mammals
May 10-Jun 17, 2000
Nobuyoshi Araki: Erotos
May 12-Jun 3, 2000
Hideo Suzuki: Family of Fantasy
Jun 21-Jul 15, 2000
Ngan Chun-Tung: Vintage Photographs 1950-70
Aug -Sep 2, 2000
Yao Jui-Chung: Savage Paradise
Sep 6-Oct 28, 2000
Amond Chu: Life Still
Nov 4-Dec 23, 2000
Bodywork: Mamoru Horiguchi, Nobuyoshi Araki, Almond Chu, Evangelo Costadimas and Paul Sabol
Dec 27-Feb 15, 2001
Wong Hung-Fei: Fish, Dream, Mammal
Feb 22-Mar 24, 2001
Masahiko Yamashita: Labyrinth
Feb 28-Apr 21, 2001
PAELLLLA 1, 2: Paul Sabol, Lau Ching-Ping, Serge Clement, Yao Jui-Chung, Lee Ka-Sing, Evangelo Costadimas and others
May 2-Jun 9, 2001
Yau Leung: Photographs from the OP Collection
Jun 23-Jul 28, 2001
Ying-Kit Chan: Industrial Landscape
Aug 29-Oct 6, 2001
Mamoru Horiguchi: 1/8
Oct 13-Nov 24, 2001
Light Canvas: Christopher Doyle, Allan Edgar, Holly Lee, Bohdan Vandiak, Wong Shun-Kit, Yao Jui-Chung
Nov 24-Dec 15, 2001
Ringo Tang: Autonomous City
Dec 19-Jan 26, 2002
Punch: Chris Curreri, John Fiorucci, Jennifer Long, Hugh Martin, Lindsay Page, Tim Saltarelli, Balint Zsako
Thru Mar 9, 2002
Yao Jui-Chung: Libido of Death
Mar 13-Apr 20, 2002
Michel Campeau: Arborescences
Apr 25-May 18, 2002
Threats and Promises: Rineke Dijkstra, Toni Hafkensheid
May 22-Jun 15, 2002
Xing Danwen: China Avant-Garde (93-98)
Jun 29-Jul 27, 2002
Seven Visions: Mexican Contemporary Photography - Mauricio Alejo, Laura Barron, Ximena Berecochea, Mariana Gruener, Gerardo Montiel Klint, Enrique Mendez, Hildegart Oloarte
Sep 4-Oct 12, 2002
Diana Thorneycroft: Still-life: stilled lives
Sep 7, 2002
Simon Glass: Seventy-Two Names of God
Oct 26-Dec 7, 2002
Hideo Suzuki: The Sun of Eden Series
Dec 14-Jan 25, 2003
Stone and Water: Elaine Ling, Katherine Knight
Feb 1-Mar 29, 2003
Leung Chi-Wo: City Mapping: Rough Cuts
Apr 23-Jun 14, 2003
Tseng Kwong-Chi: Citizen of The World
Jun 18-Aug 2, 2003
Balint Zsako: Zsako vs Photography
Sep 10-Oct 25, 2003
A Souvenir of Place: Park Hong-Chun, P. Elaine Sharpe
Nov - Dec, 2003
So Hing Keung
Jan 16-Feb 29, 2004
Punch II: Chris Curreri, John Fiorucci, Jennifer Long, Lindsay Page, Tim Saltarelli, Balint Zsako
Mar 23-Apr 3, 2004
Virginia Mak: Oh, Ominous Sunshine
Apr 23-Jun 12, 2004
P.E. Sharpe: unanswered: witness
May 19-Jun 12, 2004
Sadegh Tirafkan: Iranian man (Part II), Secret of words
Jun 15-Jul 31, 2004
Hiromi Hoshino: Impressions of South China
Jun 15-Jul 31, 2004
Simon Glass: Tohu Vebohu
Sep 8-25, 2004
Dislocation Re-launch, 79 artists
Sep 8-Oct 23, 2004
anothermountainman: redwhiteblue
Mar 5-Apr 2, 2005
Bettina Hoffmann: sweets
Apr 9-30, 2005
(Sur)real - Ireneusz Zjezdzalka, Patrycja Orzechowska
May 3-28, 2005
Patrick Lee: Look!
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DOUBLE DOUBLE
Issue 0528-2021
A Holly Lee and Lee Ka-sing online magazine. Published on Fridays since January 2019. Published by OCEAN POUNDS and archived at oceanpounds.com
All rights Reserved.
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DOUBLE DOUBLE archives
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Holly and Ka-sing currently live in Toronto with their daughter Iris, and their cat Sukimoto. Contact with email at - mail@leekasing.com / holly@xpecial.com
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The first article Ka-sing wrote for his column at PHOTO PICTORIAL. Issue 237, March 1985. He wrote about the photography assignment for Le Carde gallery, a high-end furniture boutique which also provided unusual art framing service.
After three months launching his column, Ka-sing began to provide his own layout. In principal every issue was based on the same grid. The above article, published in the first year, was about an assignment for the singer Anita Mui, the record cover and poster for her concert. Holly photographed this assignnment for Alan Chan Design company.
During the last two years before the column transformed into NuNaHeDuo, Ka-sing wrote more frequently about his thoughts on photography (instead of assignments). In this issue he wrote about "PIN PUN", a four-person exhibition of photography work by Lau Kin Wai, Lau Ching-ping, Holly Lee and Ka-sing. Photographs displayed at the column were from the Dunhuang series (1991) by Holly.
Two years later, Yau Leung 邱良, a friend thirteen years his senior, a seasoned photographer as well as editor of another photo magazine PHOTO ART 攝影藝術, successfully recruited Ka-sing to write a column for his magazine too. In fact Yau approached Ka-sing several years ago about writing articles on photography but it never came to fruition. Perhaps the time was ripe, and Ka-sing was able to tackle writing for both magazines, in which many topics were on shooting assignments, evolved and developed over time into more critical and philosophical thinking on photographic practice.
In images: WORKS MAGAZINE (1988-89)
Ever since Ka-sing started to write for PHOTO PICTORIAL in 1985, and PHOTO ART in 1987, he took control to design the layout for both columns. The layout was clean, consistent and usually displaying images in large and engaging scale, thanks to his early training as a graphic designer, opening up his eyes and mind to the world of art and design. With foresight, Ka-sing had an agreement with both publications, that he was to keep the colour separation films after the article was published. He knew these films could be applied to future use, for books, monographs and perhaps others. In truth, in the pre-desktop publishing days, colour separation took up a significant portion of cost in the production of a publication. As he toyed with idea of further use of the colour separation films collected after the writings, he came up with the design of WORKS MAGAZINE. This lavish, sixteen pages stitched-bound full colour magazine was created for the purpose of our studio portfolio, mailing out to art directors of advertising agencies and design companies. The reception was great, helping raise our reputation and identity among the industry, especially when Ka-sing was just beginning to build up his photo-illustration style, WORKS MAGAZINE really worked as a good vehicle to promote his work. From 1988 to 1989, a total of three issues of WORKS MAGAZINE were published. The success of WORKS MAGAZINE in reality seeded the early idea of NuNaHeDuo: a publication on Hong Kong alternative photography. One may ask then why sixteen pages, and not more or less? In the language of printing, the number is a signature of paper; in fact a large piece of paper, after printing, folded into sixteen pages and make up the format of a 8.5x11 inch magazine.
WORKS MAGAZINE, a promotional item from our studio. Second issue, published in May, 1988; 24 pages, 8.5 x 11 inch. Featuring photo work by Lee Ka-sing.
Starting from ZERO (NuNaHeDuo 1992-1999)
As Ka-sing recalled, in the late eighties, he first suggested the idea to Yau Leung to create an independent zine embedded into PHOTO ART, the photography magazine Yau published. Yau Leung did not give a definite reply. Perhaps, it was not easy for him to picture this fresh concept. On one special occasion in October 1991, during a Chinese photo community annual celebration gathering dinner, Ka-sing was sitting next to Sylvia Ng, the executive editor of PHOTO PICTORIAL, they began to talk about PHOTO PICTORIAL and he mentioned his bold idea to Ng; suggesting a transformation of his monthly three-page column into a sixteen-page independent publication on alternative photography, embedding it in the last section of PHOTO PICTORIAL. This embed could also be part of PHOTO PICTORIAL’s new contents relating to contemporary approaches to photography, an area that PHOTO PICTORIAL had not touched. This conversation proved productive, and Sylvia Ng had a committee meeting with the chief editor and publisher in the following week. The proposal went through. The embedded sixteen-page zine was approved to kick-start in the January issue of 1992. Despite the short time window Ka-sing put together an editorial team of three people (Ka-sing, Ching-ping and Holly) and in less than a month filled up all sixteen pages with seven artists’ works. The name of the zine agreed on was initially 娜移, which was immediately deconstructed (for its visual impact) to form 女那禾多 NuNaHeDuo, and later took up the English name Dislocation. Tucked neatly inside PHOTO PICTORIAL, the inaugural issue of NuNaHeDuo was named ZERO by Ching Ping.
NuNaHeDuo女那禾多 (DISLOCATION) Zero Issue, published on 15 January, 1992. 16 pages, 8.5x11 inch. Cover art by Tommy Li Kam-fai李錦煇, editorial by Lee Ka-sing. This inaugural issue featured work by seven artists: Holly Lee黃楚喬, Comyn Mo毛文羽, David Liu呂兆偉, Lee Ka-sing李家昇, Lau Kin Wai劉健威, Lau Ching-ping劉清平 and Bobby Sham Ka-ho沈嘉豪.
Fair Deal
From the start, the relationship between Ka-sing and the two magazines, PHOTO PICTORIAL and PHOTO ART was based on friendship, mutual benefit and trust. NuNaHeDuo survived to energize PHOTO PICTORIAL, which in return secured pasture for grazing. Ka-sing, while still receiving his original small sum of writing fee for three pages (instead of sixteen pages of contents), was further compensated by extra print-runs on thicker paper, 500 independent, sixteen-page, stitched-bound NuNaHeDuo copies every month. Starting from January 1992 to December 1995, we had a total of 48 independent issues produced (we call it: the first stage of NuNaHeDuo). To off-set cost of the extra print-runs, Ka-sing suggested reserving the back cover (of the sixteen-page NNHD) for PHOTO PICTORIAL for an advertisement. For the first year (1992) appearing on the back covers of NNHD were two alternate Hasselblad ads: one with the picture of a pheasant, and the other the back of a man carrying a Hasselblad 503CX, which seemed, to our eyes quite repetitive and boring. Approaching the second year, Ka-sing proposed to sell the advertising space to Agfa. He had good relationship with Agfa and had collaborated with the company on a number of projects. He persuaded Agfa to open up this advertisement platform for photographers, endorsing free-hand photo work every month, by using products provided by Agfa. For one and a half years (1993 - 94), eighteen photographers participated in this advertorial project, with their artwork featured prominently at the back covers of the NNHD.
The AGFA Advertisements on the back-cover: (left) Published in February 1994, work by Bobby Sham, for the Pin-hole photography issue. The image of this advertorial was a photograph taken with a pin-hole camera. (right) May 1993 issue, work by Comyn Mo.
(left) NuNaHeDuo (DISLOCATION) Annual 1992 - 12 issues (one year) in case bound, with cover jacket (original silk screen) by David Lui. (right) Annual 1993, cover jacket by Peter Suart. Ka-sing wrote a summary for both Annuals. "A Note on the First Year of NuNaHeDuo" with English translation by Mary Wong and Joe Spitzer (1992). "Review on the Second Year of Dislocation" with English translation by Josie Man (1993). From 1992 to 1995, four volumes (4 years) of NuNaHeDuo annuals were compiled.
Honestly, the success of NNHD was mainly due to learning from our past mistakes, from publishing QIU YÍNG 秋螢, the poetry publication in the seventies. Despite squeezing in our personal time and resource, there were considerable discrepancies from editing, proof-reading to handling deadlines. Now, financially secured, weaknesses identified, we were able to run an efficient and quality art publication on "schedule". As PHOTO PICTORIAL was circulated to mainland China, that also gave us a good chance to import new photography to China, a time when Chinese Avant-garde photography was still in its incubation period. Seeing the success of NuNaHeDuo, Ka-sing was able to persuade Yau Leung to let him create another sixteen-page zine - DIGI 秩智, to be embedded in PHOTO ART, with art contents created on the digital platform. Working as creative and editor, Ka-sing and I had great opportunities in meeting some famous artists, such as Tadanori Yokoo, Daniel Lee, and Charles Traub, who were all on the frontier exploring digital imaging. In practice, everybody was at the initial stage of computer art, running a race more or less at the same starting line. From 1994 to 1995, thirteen issues of DIGI were published within PHOTO ART, printed also as independent copies, later collected into two bound volumes. Up to this day I still find the experience tantalizing.
The little known DIGI magazines. (left) Front cover of the first issue of DIGI, image by Ka-sing. (right) The opening spread page of the publication - visuals by David Lui, editorial note by Ka-sing, with English translation by Mary Wong.
(lower) The second spread page. "Ten artists on Talking Head", image on right hand side by Ka-sing, a work originated from an assignment as the cover of DISCOVERY MAGAZINE (Vino issue). Ka-sing's image was a tribute to Magritte, his favourite artist. The sky backdrop was painted by our assistant on a large canvas.
A transparent and translucent journey (NNHD ZERO and GLASS Issues)
In the editorial note of the second issue of NuNaHeDuo GLASS, Ka-sing wrote about a journey in late December 1991 to January 1992. He talked about working in the studio overnight to finish an assignment, brain-storming with Lau Ching-Ping the name of the second issue of NNHD, and settling on the name GLASS shortly before the morning departing for Tokyo. Due to our busy studio schedule we could only break during Winter, usually for a month. So that year our logistic coordinates were: Tokyo / Toronto / New York / Berlin / Amsterdam. After we left Tokyo we flew to Toronto, where we met Tommy Li and confirmed that he would create the cover for ZERO, as well as a work for GLASS. A member of the celebrated Illustration Workshop, Tommy had moved to Toronto for a few years and still continued his illustrative work with paper sculptures. Based on an old family photograph, in which showed his mother holding him as a young child, Tommy recreated the image in paper-cut, folding some parts to elevate it into a three-dimensional space, creating light and shadow, flowing and rippling movements. It was delicate work, and fit right into our ZERO issue: to explore the magazine’s name “NuNaHeDuo” through image and movement. By looking carefully, it is not hard to find a number of work inside the ZERO issue also had reflected this tendency.
We flew on to New York. There Lau Ching Ping faxed us, saying that he had confirmed with several artists to work on GLASS. We also met up with Ye Si, our writer friend, and Mui Cheuk Yin, a dancer, both happened to be visiting there. We talked about GLASS and invited both to submit a work. We discussed about how Mui could elaborate from dance, a 3-D space into 2-D work. Ye Si, who we were to meet in this journey again later in Berlin, promised to write a short story for that issue. In fact he began to write that night after we’d left, and finished it in Berlin. I can still remember the difficulty to fax the story back to Hong Kong from the Berlin Hotel. Yes, we brought the fax machine with us in that trip for “faster” communication. In the very beginning of the 90’s, we were still using fax and telex. Email was just at its infant stage. CompuServe started internet-based service in 1989, and in a few years time, around 1993, we began to own a URL address.
Ka-sing wrote this editorial note for the ZERO issue at a small hotel in Tokyo. He faxed it to Ching-ping in Hong Kong for graphic design. It was the day before Ka-sing and Holly continued their journey to Toronto, where he would confirm with Tommy about the cover art. This piece, hand-written note on the hotel letterhead, is an artifact, documenting the earliest stage of working process of NuNaHeDuo.
In 1982, Tommy Li Kam-fai of the ILLUSTRATION WORKSHOP published a postcard based on an old family photograph. The image showed his mother holding him as a young boy in the park. Tommy used this as a reference to develop the paper-cut image for the cover of the ZERO issue of DISLOCATION.
Ye Si's novel published in the GLASS issue. After meeting us in New York, he began to write that night, and finished the story in Berlin. Published on the left is a Polaroid SX-70 image by K.H. (Cheung King Hung張景熊)
Winding back just a little to that Winter trip, there was so much to do in New York. We were supposed to meet Grant Peterson, a top-notched photographer, who was coined Sun King for his exquisite use of sunlight as the only light source for his work, and invite him contribute a work to GLASS. Unfortunately we didn’t have the time and missed the chance. Somehow, as we continued the journey to Amsterdam, in the Stedelijk museum, we saw an exhibition Style Forms Function by Bořek Šípek. In the exhibition, which was accompanied by the photographs of Erwin Olaf, we spotted a man holding a beautiful glass vase, and thought it would be perfect for the GLASS issue. After contacting the museum, we obtained Erwin Olaf’s address and paid him a visit. It was the last day we stayed in Amsterdam and fortunately he agreed to contribute that particular image to NuHaHeDuo. Upon our departure, he also gave us his monograph Blacks (1990) as a gift.
NNHD had a longer life span and influence than we could ever imagine. The relationship between all the parties involved was healthy and encouraging. On top of that, in 1998 the magazine received a one-year publication grant from Hong Kong Art Development Council. But good news was followed by bad. NNHD was not able to obtain another grant for the following year (1999). With the establishment of OP fotogallery and NCP (NuNaHeDuo Centre of Contemporary Photography) there were simply too much on our team’s plate. The committee had to make a critical decision, as to whether we should continue the magazine on our own expense. We finally decided to focus on developing OP fotogallery and NCP, which was still supported by government fundings, and halt the production of NNHD. This was a heartbreaking decision but a necessary one, it released our financial burden and gave us temporary relief.
From 1996 to 1999, The hard-bound NuNaHeDuo changed to a slightly squarish format (8.5x9.5 inch). We adopted a stronger thematic approach. While still published monthly in PHOTO PICTORIAL, the specific topic could take up three to six months as a unit, and compiled into a volume with pages varying from 48 to 96. We call this the Second stage of NuNaHeDuo. It began with Volume 5 - DOCUMENTARY: Facts, Fiction, Fantasy issue (96 pages published July 1996), and ended with Volume 13 - Travel Photography issue (64 pages, published February 1999).
Binary language and angel number
With passing years, many things and events have fallen into oblivion, or starting to feel fragmentary, blurry, partly broken, some fractions idealized, others in distorted segments. To get closer to what really had happened we turned over boxes and trunks, sifted through old pictures and documents, readjusting our thoughts and angles, until we're persuaded to arrive at a point of clarity, a point that allows clearer, if not a thoroughly clean view.
The NNHD DISLOCATION story, contrary to collective memory and what has been put into history, does not end in 1999. After we settled down in Toronto and established a gallery base, Ka-sing was still travelling back and forth, actively promoting and developing cultural exchanges between the two cities. His trips were multipurpose and multitasking. We were still pondering on the possibility of breathing new life into NNHD. That hope was realized in 2004. We had organized and contacted numerous artists from both cities (and beyond) to participate in the re-launch of the magazine. Employing the digital platform, DISLOCATION went virtual and became an e-zine, with an inaugural physical exhibition in Hong Kong, then Toronto, featuring over seventy artists' works, the DISLOCATION re-launch issue, numbered volume 14, was published as a PDF. Traditional publishing was no longer feasible. The way to move forward, charting new territories and traverse across borders urged us to adopt newer technology. This change was pivotal and made survival viable, a strategy all the more pronounced today. Basically self-taught, probing and seeking our way, we learned to be agile and adaptive on the digital highway.
The Third stage of NuNaHeDuo published as digital format: an ebook in PDF. Two issues were produced. It began with Volume 14, a re-launch issue published in Summer 2004, with photography by 79 artists. An inaugural exhibition of the entire collection of photographs was organized in Hong Kong and Toronto. (above) The front cover of Volume 14. (below) The third opening spread page showing an index of the 79 artists.
The editorial direction of the early years of NuNaHeDuo was very free-wheeling, and with little restraint. Free-wheeling because we did not have any baggage, nor over-the-top ambition and big dreams. It was rather, a platform open to creativity and experiments, and as long as we followed, stuck to the rules of game, i.e. the page limit, no artist fee, anything could be possible, if we had the ability, initiative, time and connection. The initial impulse of creating NNHD was to acknowledge the presence of alternative photography, which at that time, unlike the already established genres, i.e. pictorial, documentary or photo journalism, did not have a place to publish. We also believed that, the strongest work did not necessarily come from photographers. In this vein the formative years of NNHD basically focused on exploring the myriad of forms, and possibilities of photography; ranging from showing works in the form of portfolios (usually two or three persons in one issue) to thematic group projects, and examining the roles contemporary photography played and affected our daily lives. In many instances, we looked beyond conventional photography and invited writers, cinematographers, video artists, painters, graphic designers and curators to part-take the discussions. As a photo magazine, NNHD did something no other magazines had done before: crossing media and blurring art lines. Besides the publication, we also organized exhibitions of original artworks (based on works from the magazine) using alternative venues. One of the earliest of these activities was Dislocation Original Works Exhibition held at Visage Too at Shek O village in the south-eastern part of Hong Kong Island. That the first and most influential public display of alternative photography took place in this tiny wine bar is still talked about among artists in Hong Kong today.
Dislocation: Original Works Exhibition, Chapter One (1993) at Visage Too
(top) The exhibition invitation card, cover image by Ka-sing. (below) At the opening, from left: Hisun Wong, Lee Ka-Sing, anothermountainman (Stanley Wong), Lau Ching-Ping. On wall: work by Mike Tsang.
Among the many things I can write about for the first four years of NNHD, here is one interesting story. Starting from the March 1992 issue, Ka-sing redesigned the masthead of Nu女 Na那 He禾 Duo多, replacing the narrow strip of plain colour with some of our studio’s test strips. “That is another small area to play with and maximize our space for creativity”, he jokingly said. This was so true! For after a few years of experimenting this narrow strip of space, we submitted these magazine mastheads to HKIPP Biennial (organized by the Hong Kong Institute of Professional Photographers) under the category of the “Best Use of Photography”, and to our surprise it won a Gold Award! The trophy was a beautiful bronze sculpture designed and made by Antonio Mak (1954-1994). Today, in the case bound volumes of NNHD from 1992 to 1995, one can still find those tiny award-winning pieces printed humbly as mastheads in each cover of the magazines.
(top) A selection of mastheads from different issues of NNHD DISLOCATION. (below) The "Best Use of Photography" Gold Award trophy (1995), a bronze sculpture by Antonio Mak.
Like all other publications, we knew we needed more readership and were working our ways to increase subscription. Early in 1993, we rolled out a two-level subscription plan: Normal subscription (annual fee of HK$250) and Supporting subscription (annual fee of HK$1000, limited to 100). Supporting subscribers would get three 8x10 inch “numbered original print” within the year. These prints were donated by selected photographers, signed and editioned, up to 100. Patrick Lee was the first contributor to this subscription program. His photograph titled “Leaf #1” appeared in May 1993. The photographic paper was sponsored by Agfa-Gevaert. Ringo Tang contributed another image, also supported by Agfa, using Agfa’s Portriga-Rapid paper. I contributed the image “Two pieces of Rock” and printed on Cibachrome paper. In May 1994, the cross-disciplinary artist Kwok Man-Ho, also known as “Frog King”, contributed an image from his “Froggy sunglasses project”, we printed for him in our darkroom using Ilfochrome Classic paper sponsored from Jebsen & Co. By this time, the practice of collecting photographs had gained momentum, subsequently paving our way for a new project - the establishing of The Original Photograph Club (1994-1999). The last photograph donated to support NNHD subscription was from Hisun Wong (September issue, 1994). With material support from Polaroid (4x5 Type 59 film), his contribution was a hundred hand-made image-transfer prints of a milk bottle on water-colour paper.
Photograph donated by Patrick Lee
Photograph donated by Ringo Tang
Photograph donated by Kwok Man-Ho
Image-transfer print donated by Hisun Wong
NNHD concluded four years of work (we now called the first stage) in December 1995 with the release of INDEX ISSUE. Just as the name indicates, it is an issue dedicated to all 47 monthlies in fourteen pages, the last three pages provided artists information, and the back cover an editorial note by Ka-sing. Four years of persistent work did reward us with recognition, but with attention came expectation, we could no longer just take small, spontaneous steps, rather we would begin to think in another direction: now that alternative photography had made its presence eminent, the term ‘alternative’ seemed pointless, no longer relevant, as such, nonexistent.
The INDEX issue, published December, 1995. This issue summarizes all 47 monthlies (1992-1995) in thumbnails with brief content descriptions.
(below) At the back cover of the INDEX issue, Ka-sing wrote an editorial note reflecting on the previous four years of work, and announcing the coming reformation in 1996. Still attached and published monthly with PHOTO PICTORIAL, it would be re-designed as a square format, with editorial contents focusing on specific themes, usually running from three to six months as a unit.
Another three years (The second stage 1996-1998)
From 1995 we invited Wong Wo-Bik and Patrick Lee to join our committee. After half a year Wong Wo-Bik was too busy to continue and was replaced by Blues Wong. These new committee members contributed different perspectives and ideas to the magazine. We churned out more ambitious projects, dealing with specific themes which would appear in sequential issues. While still published monthly in PHOTO PICTORIAL, the specific topic could take up three to six months as a unit, and compiled into a volume with pages varying from 48 to 96. This was the Second stage of NuNaHeDuo. The format was modified, changed to a slightly squarish format. The new endeavour first appeared as Volume 5 - a compilation of 6 monthlies (January to June, 1996) in one bound publication - DOCUMENTARY: Facts, Fiction, Fantasy (96 pages published July 1996), and ultimately ended with Volume 13 - a compilation of 3 monthlies (October to December, 1998) in one bound publication - Travel Photography (64 pages, published February 1999).
The idea of Three: Hong Kong, Beijing and Taiwan
The more we look away, the more we look back: to our roots. It is inevitable, it is in our blood. In May 1996 we visited Rong Rong’s home in Beijing and met with two other photographers, Liu Zheng and Xing Danwen. Prior to the visit, we contacted them to organize some work for NNHD, which they promptly accomplished. The works of six Chinese photographers were published sequentially in three months on (July, August and September, 1996), combined in volume 7: the New Beijing Photography issue. In the editorial note I wrote about our meeting, our beer, how they loved our glossy NuNaHeDuo and how we loved their primitive xerox-copied, hand-bound journal New Photo. We purchased a copy from them and we are still keeping it, like treasuring our once pure and modest friendship, in the days before the big art surge, when less was more, grand-scale had not affected widely, yet, to become the international buzzword.
NNHD DISLOCATION, New Beijing Photography issue, the first opening spread page. An editorial note by Holly Lee, presented as a personal letter addressed to Xing Danwen.
In 1997, for seven months in a roll, the contents of NNHD aimed at one theme: Hong Kong. Eighteen Hong Kong photographers were invited to show work relating to this thread. Ka-sing wrote an editorial and featured essays by four writers: Carmen Lee, Matthew Turner (On Hong Kong), Warren Leung (Photography of a culture) and Norman Jackson Ford (Hong Kong Art at the Cosmopolitan Crossroads). The seven monthlies were bound into volume 8: On Hong Kong. It was the time of change. Though the colonial history of Hong Kong is brief, it deeply etched and knitted into the lives and consciousness of its citizens. The artists featured in On Hong Kong were mostly born from the 50's to 60's, they had memories of Hong Kong as a quiet, modest city growing to become the muscular, speedy, gold crown beast that headed the Asian dragons. Reviewing these photographs, one faintly feels the passages going and gone through, images mirroring moods and reactions of this particular time. A few months after the dragon and lion flag changed into the bauhinia flower, on January 21st, 1998, NNHD co-presented with Fringe Festival by launching a full scale exhibition: of photo works from On Hong Kong at the Hong Kong City Hall, an important public art venue located in the Central District, and right next to the famous Star Ferry in the Victoria Harbour.
The ON HONG KONG exhibition at City Hall. Photography work by Karl Chiu, Almond Chu, Alfred Ko Chi-Keung, Lau Ching-Ping, Patrick Lee, Lee Ka-Sing, Holly Lee, Leung Chi-Wo, Yvonne Lo, Bobby Sham, So Hing-Keung, Ringo Tang, Tsang Tak-Ping, Tse Chi-Tak, Tse Ming-Chong, Wong Chi-Fai, Blues Wong and Wong Kan-Tai.
Starting from 1997, Luk Chi-Cheong had been helping NNHD with publication design. A number of graphic designers also contributed their help in the previous years, notably David Lui, Eric Chan, Stanley Wong, Freeman Lau, Victor Cheong, Lilian Tang and a few others.
Rewinding back to 1994, the Hong Kong Arts Centre had organized an exhibition titled Contemporary Photography from Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Curated by the exhibition director Oscar Ho, it selected some forty photographers’ work from the three regions. This marked a key milestone in the discourse on photography practised in these areas with “differential social development”. After NNHD had published the New Beijing Photography issue and On Hong Kong Issue, we approached Wu Jia-Bao 吳嘉寶, an important Taiwanese educator and photo critic, to curate an issue on Taiwanese photography for us. The works were published in three monthly issues and bound into volume 11, a publication under the title "Taiwan Contemporary Photography 1998". Simultaneously these photographs were arranged to be shown in our newly set-up OP fotogallery. As Ka-sing recalled Wu Jia-Bao’s selection process, he noted that Wu was concerned with the unique small space of OP fotogallery in Hong Kong, and had to leave out important photographers like Chen Shun-Chu 陳順築 and Wu Tien-Chang 吳天章, the former famous for his photo-installation, and the latter, known for his large scale print. But the collaboration led us to the artist Yao Jui-Chung 姚瑞中, whose work we included in our inaugural exhibition in Toronto 2000.
City Detour, the inaugural exhibition at LEE KA-SING gallery (formerly called OP fotogallery, Toronto), Spring 2000. A group show by Yao Jui-Chung, Leung Chi-Wo, Patrick Lee, Ringo Tang and Lee Ka-Sing.
Yao Jui-Chung was in Toronto to install his solo exhibition SAVAGE PARADISE at LEE KA-SING gallery, August 2000.
A new life
I feel sad, more so nostalgic to close the second stage of NNHD. Flipping thematic issues like Sequence, In resident, New Voice and Travel Photography, I still feel the pulse of the city, its people, its openness to languages of expression, its ever growing curiosity and experimentation. Here we show our deep respect and gratitude to all those involved to make DISLOCATION a magazine so cherished, and the work experience so unforgettable.
DISLOCATION ceased to publish when the era was drawing to a close. A few years later into the millennium, bracing available technology we found courage and recouped new strength to enter into an exciting new cycle of NuNaHeDuo.
Highlights of some issues in NNHD DISLOCATION in the First Stage (1992-1995), and the nine volumes in the Second Stage (1996-1999)
March 1992 issue
This issue published works by three artists, all of whom painters sometimes engaging work with mix-media: Chan Yuk-Keung 陳育強, Choi Yan-Chi 蔡仞姿 and Wong Shun-Kit 王純杰. Cover photo by Ka-sing.
Work by Chan Yuk-Keung
Work by Choi Yan-Chi
Work by Wong Shun-Kit
June 1993 issue
This issue published work by two artists working in the film industry: Christopher Doyle 杜可風, cinematographer; Yank Wong 黄仁逵, art director for films. Cover photo by Ka-sing.
Work by Christopher Doyle
Work by Yank Wong
September 1994 issue
Summer of 98 was a theme set for three art directors from the advertising and design industry to produce photo-based work: Tan Khiang 陳騫, Stanley Wong 黄炳培 and Freeman Lau 劉小康. Cover photo by Ka-sing.
Work by Stanley Wong
May 1992 issue
Cover photo by Ka-sing. This issue published works by two avant-garde artists in the performance circle: Danny Yung 榮念曾, founder/director of Zuni Icosahedron 進念.二十面體; Peter Suart 彼得小話, member of the band The Box 盒子樂隊, which he formed with Kung Chi-Shing 龔志成 in the late nineties. In this issue Danny Yung manipulated a historical photograph by swapping heads of the Communist leaders, a sensitive treatment and we were told by Sylvia Ng that this issue might not be able to circulate in China.
Work by Danny Yung
March 1995 issue
Cover photo by Holly Lee. The issue examined the idea of Identity, in which three photographers who lived and studied abroad were invited to submit works: Lana Wong 黄家璧, Hiram To 杜子卿 and Kary Kwok 郭家熾. Kary’s work went into trouble. His fictitious half-naked, self-inflicted injury and suicide self-portraits were rejected by PHOTO PICTORIAL. The truth was just too much. At the end, after some negotiations, we agreed to take action, self-censoring Kary’s photographs by placing black blocks covering controversial parts. This triggered us an immediate response, to organize and produce a special theme for the upcoming April issue: On Censorship.
Work by Hiram To
Work by Kary Kwok
Work by Kary Kwok
April 1995 issue.
On Censorship. Essays by Madeleine M. Slavick, Patrick Lee, Lau Sheung-Yeung, Blues Wong and 今日子. An interview of Sylvia Ng by Phoebe Man. Featured at below, a selection of spead pages from the On Censorship issue: (1) Spread page, editorial note written by Lee Ka-sing, Madeleine M. Slavick’s article: A Space to Think? (2) Spread page: the interview with Sylvia Ng, editor of PHOTO PICTORIAL. (3) Spread page: article by Patrick Lee: A Voice from the wilderness. (4) Spread page: continued the article When Batman punishes the Joker by Blues Wong; the texts in red is a documentation of the symposium on “Photography and Obscenity” sponsored by déjà-vu magazine held in Tokyo. It explained, “It was organized in response to the events surrounding the 11-day detention of the director of a gallery for suspicion of importing and selling obscene materials specifically, copies of Araki Nobuyoshi’s catalog AKT-tokyo 1971-1991.”
April 1993 issue
This unique Postcard issue was designed with four postcards per page, in total 24 postcards were featured. It was printed on heavy card stock, featuring a main article: On Postcards by Matthew Turner, with Chinese translation by Josie Man. Twenty four artists participated in this project: Chan Fung-Chun, Leo Chan, Gary Chang, Victor Cheong, Eric Cheung, Bob Davis, Joseph Fung, K.H., Jen R. Halim, Oscar Ho, Lau Ching-Ping, Freeman Lau, Lau Pui-Yee, Warren Leung, Andrew Chester Ong, Angela and Carsten Schael, Stella Tang, Christopher Doyle, Kith Tsang, Mike Tsang, Blues Wong, Wong Chi-Fai, Mathias Woo, Clement Yick Tat Wa. Blank side of the postcards were designed by Chou So-Hing, Eric Chan and David Lui. Cover photo by Ka-sing.
May 1993 issue
The theme was Photo Installation. Cover photo by Ka-sing. Essays: O Happy Chance by Patrick Lee, The Music and the Myth by Sidney Pun. Featured artists: K.H. + Chan Fung-Chun, Warren Leung + Sara Wong.
Work by K.H. + Chan Fung-Chun
Work by Warren Leung Chi Wo + Sara Wong
August 1993 issue
Family Album was a thematic group project participated by eleven children of differing background. Obtaining sponsorship of Nikon AF600 QD cameras from Shriro HK Ltd., Agfachrome RS100 films sponsored by Agfa and lab support from Front Production House, we were able to give these little artists cameras and material needed to photograph their family - totally free-hand. In the editorial note of this issue Ka-sing wrote, “Jacky Kwok Yan-Chee 郭恩慈 provides this issue with a binding overview through her article on Children’s photography…Finally we asked 10-year old Iris Lee to design the cover. She was at first undecided between photography and computer illustration as her medium, then picked the latter and her favourite paint program, studio 32. As a point of reference Iris selected the Nikon AF600 camera, used by all the children contributing photographs to this particular issue.” Participants: Neil Lee Thompsett, Keith Cheung, Ian Chui, Thomas Hynes, Leung An-Wen, Mak Woon and Mak Ching, Larissa Davis, Lau Chun, Jonnic Lee Thompsett, Julian Shiu.
(left) Larissa Davis, daughter of Bob Davis, age 4. (right) Leung Anwen, daughter of Leung Ping-Kwan, age 8.
September 1993 issue
This issue, titled Fabrication 揑造專號, we’d invited Oscar Ho 何慶基, the exhibition director of the Hong Kong Arts Centre, to create work based on the aforementioned theme. Back in October 1992, we had already done an issue with the same name, this would serve as our on-going study on the subject “Fabrication”. Essay: Fabrication by Oscar Ho. Cover by Ka-sing.
October 1995 issue
Guest curated by David Clarke 祈大衛, the issue was named Revisions. Cover and publication design by Eric Chan. A number of artists were invited to submit a pair of images, one from the past, and the other taken after they’d been invited to this project. David Clarke wrote an essay on the concept of Revisions. Artists invited: Lo Yin-Shan, Edwin Lai, Mo Man-Yu, Alfred Ko, Wong Wo-Bik, Ken Wong, Albert Li, Yvonne Lo, Chan Wei-Man, Osbert Lam.
February 1994 issue
Pinhole Photography issue. Editorial note by Ka-sing. Cover design by Freeman Lau. Perhaps, this might be the first time a magazine cover printed in all black. Besides, a small hole was drilled in the centre of the publication going through the 16 pages. The AGFA advertisement on the back cover was photographed by Bobby Sham with a pinhole camera. With pinhole photography dedicated to the whole issue, we had participants from the Art Camp (on pinhole photography) in the Hong Kong Art Centre mentored by Joseph Fung 馮漢紀; and pinhole photographs by Bobby Sham. In this issue Joseph Fung also talked about the making of pinhole cameras and the required technique in creating an image. Photographers featured: Joseph Fung, Benjamin Lui, Vincent Chan, Angie Tsui, Carmen Yim, Bobby Sham.
February 1995 issue
PHOTO BOOTH Issue. Cover photo: Holly Lee. Editorial note by Wong Wo-Bik. Opening Spread: Editorial note and photo booth pictures. (bottom) spread of an inside page. Participants in the project: Phoebe Man, Victor Chiu, Craig Au-Yeung, Carsten Schael, Stephen Cheung, Leo Chan, Yvonne Lo, Wong Chi-Chung, Eliza L. Leung, Warren Leung, Brenda Turnnidge, Lau Ching-Ping, Albert Li, Dung Kai-Cheung, Paul Sabol, Kith Tsang, Gary Chang, Wing Shya, Wong Wo-Bik, Chan Yuk-Keung, David Clarke, Stanley Wong, Almond Chu, Holly Lee, Tan Khiang, Lo Yin-Shan, David Lui, Patrick Lee, Bobby Sham, Osbert Lam and Jadee Bow,Hisun Wong, Wang Hai, Evangelo Costadimas, So Hing-Keung, Ringo Tang, Sara Wong, Comyn Mo, Ning+Blues
The nine volumes of NuNaHeDuo DISLOCATION in the Second Stage (1996-1999)
Volume 5, 1996 (96 pages). Documentary: Facts Fiction Fantasy.
Cover photo: Leung Chi-Wo, Warren. Essays by Suen Shu-Kwan, Leon 孫樹坤, Patrick Lee 李志芳, Blues Wong 黄啟裕, Chung Chi-Leung 鍾智樑. Over forty artists appeared in this volume. Under our loupe: Our Lady of Joy Monastery (Trappist) by Patrick Lee; Photo Diary by David Clarke (photo & text); 10 Portraits for a Serial Killer (a found fiction presented by K-Theory); V.C. & k.h. Please, please…什麼的
Volume 6, 1996 (48 pages). Sequence.
Cover photo: Kith Tsang 曾德平. Essay: Et Sequentia by Eric Otto Wear. A creative project using images and texts in the form of a renga. Participating artists: Wong Chi-Fai 黄志輝, Holly Lee 黄楚喬, Kith Tsang 曾德平 , Hiram To 杜子卿, Phoebe Man 文晶瑩, Lo Yin-Shan 盧燕珊, Law Wai-Ming 羅維明.
Volume 7, 1996 (48 pages). New Beijing Photography.
Cover photo: Lee Ka-Sing. Letter to Danwen by Holly Lee. Essay: 此在的圖像誌 by 島子. Photographers featured: Liu Shu-Yung 劉樹勇, Xu Zhi-Wei 徐志偉, Yuan Dong-Ping 袁冬平, Rong Rong 榮榮, Xing Danwen 邢丹文, Liu Zheng 劉錚.
Volume 8, 1997 (112 pages). On Hong Kong.
Cover and publication design: Luk Chi-Cheong 陸志昌. Essays by Carmen Li 李筱怡, Warren Leung, Lo Kwai-Cheung 羅貴祥, Matthew Turner (with translation from Lydia Ngai and Phoebe Wong). Photographers featured: Karl Chiu 趙嘉榮, Almond Chu Tak-Wah 朱德華, Alfred Ko Chi-Keung 高志强, Lau Ching-Ping, Patrick Lee Chi-Fong, Lee Ka-Sing, Holly Lee, Warren Leung Chi-Wo, Yvonne Lo Yuen-Man 盧婉雯, Bobby Sham 沈嘉豪, So Hing-Keung 蘇慶强, Ringo Tang 鄧鉅榮, Kith Tsang, Ducky Tse Chi-Tak 謝志德, Wong Chi-Fai 黄志輝, Blues Wong, Ken Wong Kan-Tai 黄勤帶, Norman Jackson Ford.
Volume 9, 1997 (80 pages). In Resident.
Publication design: Luk Chi-Cheong. Essay: Photographers Meeting by Norman Jackson Ford. Cited from the editorial note, “In these past few years, there have been photographers passing through Hong Kong - some to reside for only a brief period, and some take roots and make Hong Kong their homes. And in the course of pursuing their photographic art they have imposed certain influences for Hong Kong photography. Dislocation will feature the work of some ten photographers who fall into this category.” Photographers featured: Hoshino Hiromi 星野博美, Tomoko Kikuchi, Norman Jackson Ford, Madeleine Slavick 思樂維, Patricia Kay, Ernst Logar, Ric Kallaher, Dickson Yewn 翁狄森, Serge Clément.
Volume 10, 1998 (48 pages). New Voice.
Publication design: Luk Chi-Cheong. Essay: Teaching and Learning: The Odd Couple? By Kith Tsang. “…On the other hand, there emerge a new breed of young photographers who have the will to disregard old aesthetics; although these images appear years after Japan and North America, we could feel the pulse of this city when deciphering their down to earth Portfolios. In this volume we feature a selected new and notable photographers with common academic background (mostly come from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University)…” excerpted from editorial note. Photographers featured: Fan Yuk Ki, Chan Ho Fung, Cedric, James Law, Tony Ko, Sunny Yan.
Volume 11, 1998 (48 pages). Taiwan Contemporary Photography 1998.
Publication design: Luk Chi-Cheong. Essay: The Art of Taiwanese photography after the 90’s by Wu Jia-Bao 吳嘉寶. Photographers featured: Ho Ching-Tai 何經泰, Chou Ching-Hui 周慶輝, Yao Jui-Chung 姚瑞中, Albert J.L. Huang 黄建亮, Lin Pei-Hsun 林佩薰.
Volume 12, 1998 (48 pages). Recent Work.
Publication design: Luk Chi-Cheong. Essay: Hong Kong’s stifled Art Spaces by John Batten. Showcasing 23 photographers’ recent work: Patrick Lee, David Clarke, Ng Sai-Kit 吳世傑, So Hing-Keung, Serge Clément, Hoshino Hiromi, Anthony Lam, Wong Hung-Fei 黄鴻飛, Mak Fung 麥烽, Lee Ka-Sing, Ducky Tse, Almond Chu, Eric Carrera Lowe, Hisun Wong 王希慎, Blues Wong, Chan Wai-Man 陳偉民, Norman Jackson Ford, Andrew Chester Ong, Josiah Leung, Kith Tsang, Evangelo Costadimas, Bobby Sham, Do Do Jin Ming 金旻.
Volume 13, 1999 (48 pages). Travel Photography.
Publication design: Luk Chi-Cheong. Editorial note by Lau Ching-Ping. Essay: Travel • Hong Kong • Photography written by Warren Leung. This issue explored the diversity and pluralistic possibilities in travel photography. Invited participants: Sean Dougherty, Janet Fong Man-Yee 方敏兒, Teresa Chan, Cheung Tsui-Hung, Gloria, Lai Tat-Wing, Patrick Lee, Fung Wai-Yan, Sonia Tsang, James Ting, Pang Sin-Kwok, Beatrix, Au Tse-Keung, Johnny, Cheung Kin-Wai, David, Wong Hung-Fei.
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DISLOCATION Volume 14, PDF format, 119 pages, published in July 2004. Edited by NuNaHeDuo Centre of Photography
This side towards lens
FOTO POST, Volume one, number 14, 4 pages, July 15, 2003. Published by OCEAN and POUNDS.
Some of photography e-books we published in the early millennium.
At the end of 1999, Ka-sing and I had been busy moving between Markham and Toronto, getting ready to inaugurate our photo gallery in the Candy Factory Loft. We named it “OP fotogallery (Toronto)”, which literally was, an extension to the “OP fotogallery (Hong Kong)”. It was meant to facilitate as our base in North America, functioning as an associate of the Hong Kong gallery, with the major task of synchronizing activities between the two cities.
Apart from family reasons, our move from Hong Kong to Toronto was never about leaving. It was more about reaching out, to connect and interact with other parts of the world. To us, it was exciting as a continuation of what we had established in Hong Kong, moreover full of anticipation of what was to come. With the halting of NNHD in 1999, NCP and OP fotogallery in 2000, I must admit we were a bit lost and disheartened.
At the end of 2003, Sylvia Ng of PHOTO PICTORIAL approached Ka-sing for help, asking him to assist in rescuing the publication, as the signs were clear - the magazine's readership and advertising were both going downhill. Ka-sing suggested to rebrand the magazine, giving it a totally new look. Content-wise keeping only the on-photo-equipment section plus limited pages for amateur or salon photography. Consequently they agreed on the new approach, Ka-sing was given full autonomy to redesign the layout and provide major contents for the magazine. Tommy Li Kam-Fai, who did the cover of DISLOCATION ZERO issue eleven years ago, helped to redesign the Chinese type-face of PHOTO PICTORIAL. The revamped issue began from January 2004. In the event of celebrating the 40th Anniversary of PHOTO PICTORIAL, the redesigned magazine was launched with a party held at the Fringe Gallery, alongside the solo exhibition of anothermountainman. After the launch of the rebranded PHOTO PICTORIAL, someone mentioned that he could feel the spirit of NNHD there. That was true, since the ceasing of NNHD, the closure of NCP and OP, we placed our focus and gathered all reserved energy into refashioning PHOTO PICTORIAL, the vision, the vibe, the tenacity and character would certainly be projected there.
The rebranded PHOTO PICTORIAL, With our assistance to rebrand the publication, resulting a total of 16 issues in one and half year. It began with issue 462 (January 2004) and ended with issue 477 (April 2005), which is also the last issue of PHOTO PICTORIAL.
Issue 462 - (COVER) Diana Thorneycroft, (INTERVIEW) anothermountainman, (PHOTO CHINESE) Xing Danwen, (PHOTO INTERNATIONAL) Diana Thorneycroft, (E-BOOK) Almond Chu, Toni Hafkenscheid. Issue 463 - (COVER) Mauricio Alejo, (INTERVIEW) Leung Chi-Wo, (PHOTO CHINESE) Yao Jui-Chung, (PHOTO INTERNATIONAL) Mauricio Alejo, (FOTO POST), (E-BOOK) Nobuyoshi Araki. Issue 464 - (COVER) Robert and Shana Parkeharrison, (INTERVIEW) Patrick Lee, (PHOTO CHINESE) B. Pollack on Chinese Photography. trans. (PHOTO INTERNATIONAL) Robert and Shana Parkeharrison, (FOTO POST), (E-BOOK) Hideo Suzuki, (OP CAFE) anothermountainman exhibition. Issue 477 - (COVER) Michael Awad, (PHOTO INTERNATIONAL) Michael Awad.
The major part of artwork of the new PHOTO PICTORIAL was produced in Toronto, with files saved in our server for the Hong Kong PP studio to download. On helping to revamp the magazine, the term Ka-sing gave was to have full autonomy of the contents, and both parties agreed to review the relationship after twelve months. The picture did not shine as bright as we'd expected. There were constant debates in the magazine among the old readers, some protested against the change and others favoured the reform. The worst thing was the publisher's lack of standpoint, short of a vision to introduce the publication to a broader, newer group of audience. After nine months, the publisher wished to replace some of the new contents with old materials. At the very end, the publisher only wanted to keep the monthly writing I produced on international photography, and the spread Contents Page designed by Ka-sing. Ka-sing ended the collaboration with PP in issue #477 (April 2005), which was also the last issue of the magazine. Someday I will write an individual piece focusing on this one and half year collaboration, which Ka-sing described as a post-NuNaHeDuo relationship with PHOTO PICTORIAL.
Crossing over
With the newly set up gallery in 2000, we met and acquainted a decent number of Canadian artists, some of whom later added to our gallery’s roster; P. E. Sharpe was one of them. The flame was always there, since we had already set up the digital platform, running our own servers and producing a number of photography e-books and ezines, the idea of creating a new, digital life for DISLOCATION was in view. We invited Sharpe to join our team, to work with the Hong Kong committee members Lau Ching-Ping, Patrick Lee, Blues Wong (we also suggested adding Janet Fong to our group) for the “DISLOCATION Re-launch issue”. We started by inviting a hundred photographers to partake, each to submit an image working around the theme of “dislocation”. Seventy nine artists had responded.
During Summer 2004, Ka-sing had an exhibition in the Hong Kong Heritage Museum. Titled FOODSCAPE it was a project in collaboration with Leung Ping-Kwan. This time they'd also invited Millie Chen, a Canadian Taiwanese as guest artist to put up a large scale installation of her work. Ka-sing was in Hong Kong for the whole month that Summer, and had brought P. E. Sharpe (who was our gallery artist then) and her solo exhibition to the Hong Kong Fringe Gallery. It was because of this background and occasion, came the idea of mounting simultaneously an exhibition in Hong Kong to celebrate the re-launch of DISLOCATION. The two openings opened with great fanfare, with Sharpe's show "unanswered: witness" on the main gallery, and “DISLOCATION Re-launch, 79 artists” in Volkswagen Fotogalerie on the second level of Fringe Club.
DISLOCATION RE-LAUNCH exhibition at Volkswagen Fotogalerie, Hong Kong. (top) Detail of the installation, exhibition designed by anothermountainman. (below) At opening reception. (from left) Image 1: - Evangelo Costadimas, Leung Chi Wo, Sara Wong, Norman Jackson Ford, David Clarke. Image 2 - Sabrina Fung, Millie Chen. Image 3 - Josiah Leung, Lau Ching-ping, Janet Fong, Lam Wai Kit, Bobby Sham.
In addition to this, there was a side story coming from the re-launch exhibition. After seeing the show, the editor of MILK, an innovative cultural magazine in Hong Kong, invited Ka-sing to write a column for MILK on the DISLOCATION stories. From August 2004 Ka-sing continued his literary account on visual culture linked closely with DISLOCATION. They were published weekly in MILK, and he named this column “DISLOCATION M”. Overall he wrote 39 pieces, insisting on his old habit to provide his own layouts. So for close to a year, every week MILK downloaded a finished artwork from our server.
Two vintage prints output directly from the files of Lee Ka-Sing’s DISLOCATION M column 女那禾多記 for MILK magazine. 303mmx202mm, c-type photographic paper (2004).
(top) Article “連環杜可風”, on Christopher Doyle. Doyle autographed this print when he was in Toronto on 11 September 2004. (below) Article “與藝術分手毛文羽”, on Mo Man-Yu.
Back in Toronto in September 2004 we ran the same “DISLOCATION Re-launch, 79 artists” in LEE Ka-Sing Gallery at the Candy Factory Loft. At the same time DISLOCATION volume 14 was launched as an e-zine (as PDF). Bob Black, painter, writer and photographer we met in Toronto, became a close friend. We'd invited him to participate as one of the artists in the Re-launch, and after seeing the show, he wrote a thoughtful essay for the exhibition.
A vintage poster produced for the publicity of “DISLOCATION Re-launch, 79 artists” exhibition at LEE KA-SING gallery, Toronto. Poster size: 303mmx407mm, on c-type photographic paper (2004)
One page from the draft of a manuscript Bob Blak wrote about the DISLOCATION RE-LAUNCH exhibition at LEE KA-SING gallery, Toronto. The manuscript was recovered not until 2020 when we were gathering material for the "DOUBLE DOUBLE: Box-in-a-Valise" exhibition. In March 2021, we met Bob and told him about the manuscript, he was excited and enriched it with additional remarks using a ball pen in blue.
The full length manuscript is now archived at ON PHOTOGRAPHY -
https://oceanpounds.com/blogs/onphotography/dislocation
Landscape in flux
So much had happened in 2005, just when we were organizing work for a new issue for DISLOCATION (Volume 15, on GEOGRAPHY), we were hard at work on preparing for the Alternative Art Fair in New York. However, due to some unforeseen issues at the border, eventually we did not attend. The last quarter of 2005 was extremely stressful, but what took a really big bite of our strength was the decision to move from the Candy loft to another building, to 50 Gladstone Avenue. And perhaps this was the reason why DISLOCATION volume 15 never came out. Once we moved into the hundred-year old, three-storied building, our life was completely taken over and totally pushed into another direction. There was so much work, so much struggle that we had to put everything down and remain focus in overcoming what was needed most. It was also during this confusing period when DISLOCATION's new digital face faded out, bit by bit, and did not make its way back until I started to write about NNHD, and digging out photographs, paperwork and documents from the basement, until Ka-sing recovered DISLOCATION volume 14 as a pdf e-zine in his old hard disk, until a black box tagged “Geography” appears in front of our eyes (where the materials of Volume 15 was kept neatly inside); as compact discs containing images from photographers; as brief notes on the contents (written by me!); as editorial print-outs with marked instructions; as an article ‘“Escaping” written by P.E. Sharpe. How could something so concrete could be so largely forgotten, dislocated and dismissed? Why do we keep asking ourselves this question? Haven't we already learned memories are fragile, fallible, susceptible even to "deletion". Isn't this also a large part to do with our age, our difficult relationship and struggle with memory?
(Sometime after this paragraph was written, I discover at Ka-sing’s blog archive, his writings for MILK #33, a piece about the newly released DISLOCATION Volume 15. This "missing" volume included work by 11 artists, 168 pieces in three sections: 1. Urban and Suburban 城市與外城市; 2. Clockwise and Perpendicular 順時針與直角線; 3. Fugitive Geography 陣空地理學. As a consequence of the unfortunate break-down of our server and computer fifteen years ago, presently the digital copy of Volume 15 has not yet been found. Below is the link for Ka-sing writing on Volume 15 -
https://leekasing-dislocation.blogspot.com/2010/07/33.html
Recapturing time
The fragility of memory - no matter how true and serious this observation maybe, memories are the most precious and one of the few things we can claim in our essence of being. While I am roaming in my memory chamber contemplating the history of DISLOCATION, an exhibition is happening in Hong Kong, titled “New Horizons: Ways of Seeing Hong Kong Art in the 80s and 90s” (at HKMoA, Hong Kong Museum of Art). In the exhibition, among other artists and art groups, was a reconstruction of the physical space where the magazine (NNHD), the photography centre (NCP) and the photo gallery (OP fotogallery) once resided. This could happen thanks to the memories of Janet Fong, who guest curated the exhibition for the Hong Kong Museum of Art.
“New Horizons: Ways of Seeing Hong Kong Art in the 80s and 90s”, at HKMoA, Hong Kong Museum of Art. January 2021 to Spring 2022. (right upper corner) on left wall - Work by Blues Wong; right wall - work by Lau Ching-ping. (left lower corner) work by Holly Lee.
After I left Hong Kong, Janet Fong was appointed to work for OP fotogallery and NCP. A student of Blues Wong, freshly graduated from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Photographic Design, Janet got involved and immersed in the artistic atmosphere and practice of the 80’s and 90’s, during which time she matured, became well-versed in contemporary art, and when the right time came, stepped into a curator’s shoes.
The exterior of OP fotogallery, hong kong (1998-2001) located at Number 5 Prince Terrace, Hong Kong. Formerly the photo studio of Holly and Ka-sing.
In the “New Horizons: Ways of Seeing Hong Kong Art in the 80s and 90s” exhibition, two art spaces were re-created. In former years, these were the spaces where activities were held and art were exhibited. 1. - a cafe, an art installation created by its founding members in 1998 at Para Site (founded in 1996 as an active independent art institution); 2.- the OP fotogallery, a space where NNHD was organized, and NCP activities were shared. In the reconstructed space of OP fotogallery, each of the five committee member showed a piece, or a series of old work from the nineties. In the centre of the main gallery, a document cabinet is placed reminiscing on a past beloved table used for prints viewing, portfolios sharing, beer drinking, and sitting around it, discussions on photography brewing. On top of the cabinet a number of artifacts are on display.
In a way, Janet Fong was thinking fondly of a time past. She wants to unlock those memories, bringing them up close and personal, recreating certain facets of a former time to revisit. It is not too hasty to say then, by introducing this exhibition, she is also paying tribute to the artists that have influenced her ways of looking at art, and ultimately her path choosing art as a career. Memory is not only fragile, it is strong in reinvention, it changes every time upon recall, it adds and subtracts accordingly. The reconstruction of the OP space, therefore, is not and cannot be an exact replica, but an appropriation, after which, when the space is demolished, would become a new memory; and in the years to come, building up more sheets and layers, crushing and gnarling, a landscape in flux, a swirling maelstrom, an avalanche of flashbacks and anamnesis.
Thirty years
NNHD DISLOCATION was launched in 1992, approaching thirty next year, in 2022. In fact three decades wasn’t that long a time; but the more I think about it, the more it seems like yesterday. To younger generations who do not have such memory or just perching on the rim, the name DISLOCATION has become far more abstract, a legend, an imagination becoming a preoccupation. The word DISLOCATION, when first taken as an English name for NuNaHeDuo, was applied out of the feeling of displacement, of not belonging, rather than referring literally to distance or location. But after thirty years, it might be far more relevant to use the term today. For it does not need to take fifty years, not even thirty years for Hong Kong to submit to a totalitarian change. Within the space of twenty-seven years, free will weeded out, unfriendly, controlling winds send many people drifting, like seeds scattering out to different parts of the world, some soft landing, some hard, all dislocated. This leads us to think, what if we were able to restart a new chapter of DISLOCATION in 2022, wouldn't it be more about searching, and yearning for a real sense of belonging? An off-colour thought, an unintentional prophecy, a strangely familiar feeling creeping inside of me, insinuating an unsettling thought that the name DISLOCATION never sounds so right; and so timely.
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Dancing flames
Among the earliest publications Ka-sing made was a poetry journal called the Fire Blade 火鍔, a primitive hand-stencil-printed tabloid (195mm x 270mm, 8 pages, published monthly in 1969, with 6 issues published). Soon after he would join force with another poetry publication QIU YÍNG SHĪ KĀN《秋螢詩刊》. Based in Hong Kong, this monthly periodical is literally translated as Autumn Firefly Poetry Journal. It was first published in 1970 as a four-page newspaper size stencil print publication, head speared by Kwun Moon Nam 關夢南, a young poet in his mid-twenties with two like-minded friends, Nam Lau 藍流 (容沅林) and Ka-sing 家昇. Ka-sing was about sixteen when he became a part of QIU YÍNG, without foreseeing the fireflies would follow him, weaving more fire nets, igniting and enriching his life then, and even more so now.
The Chinese type-face of of QIU YÍNG 秋螢 was originated from a body of wood-cuts by Ka-sing produced in 1976. It was first used in the Postcard Period (1986-88), and adopted through the final period of the publication.
Hot and Cold
QIU YÍNG, in its various transformations, has lived several lives. I’d taken part in some of the production during the eighties. My impression, and the most remembered and reverent thing in my mind is the logo, the Chinese character of QIU YÍNG 秋螢, drawn from the wood-cuts made by Ka-sing. It has, in fact become an icon of the poetry publication. It has been used as a type face for the journal since it was created in 1979, and continues to represent the publication through 2010. To further arouse curiosity, I would like to offer a little help for those who do not know what the Chinese characters 秋螢 QIU YÍNG (Autumn Firefly) stand for. Let's begin by deciphering the roots in the ideogram and pictogram of the characters.
秋: Autumn (made up of 禾 and 火). 禾: seedings of cereal crops; 火: fire.
螢 Firefly (made up of 火火 and 虫 ). 火火: two fires; 虫: insect.
The dry weather in Autumn would likely draw fires, but fireflies dancing in the cool Autumn night makes an enchanting scene. And youth is, and always will be, burning fire. As the idea of the name gives energy (though meek), it is also vivid and poetic, releasing a hypnotic embodiment of image, music and movement.
QIU YÍNG, the second issue, 1970 (Stencil Period).
275mm x 304mm, 4 pages, stencil printing.
QIU YÍNG the thirteenth issue, 1971 (Letter-press Period).
275mm x 307mm, 4 pages, letter-press printing.
The Five Petal Flower
Intermittently QIU YÍNG had gone through four periods. The initial tabloid format was stencil printed in 120 copies, lasted from 1970 to 71 with 11 issues. It then changed into a bi-monthly, with better quality letter-press printing from 1971 to 1972, producing a total number of 6 issues, each printed in 500 copies.
The next transformation took place in 1978, when Ka-sing and I had just secured a place to establish our photo studio. Though we used our eyes more often now than with words, poetry was always on our minds. Ka-sing suggested to Kwun Moon Nam to restore QIU YÍNG, with new perspective and a fresh concept. For each issue, QIU YÍNG would feature one visual artist along with poems. The tabloid, still retained the size of 11 x 17 inch, would be printed by offset printing on semi-mat paper. The revive issue, which by this time was Number 18, received a lot of compliments. It had also encouraged our friend Tommy Li, who we invited to handle the publication’s design, to experiment more boldly. Starting from Number 20, the publication had grown to the poster size of 20 x 24 inch. This did not happen by chance. The beginning of the eighties was also the heyday of posters, where art, design, commercial and life-style posters were everywhere to meet the consumerist boom. Thus QIU YÍNG adopted this format and we encouraged people to put them on wall. This was wishful thinking, considering that we had neglected the tiny spaces most Hong Kong people were living in. The poster format lasted for a year with seven issues survived.
QIU YÍNG issue 21 (front and back), 1978 (Poster Period).
Designed by Tommy Lee Kam Fai, Photography by Leong Ka Tai.
507mm x 355mm, one page, double sides, offset printing, print-run: 500
There is truth in the Chinese saying: The lotus roots may break, but the threads cling on. Indeed these threads led us back to QIU YÍNG, for a fourth time. When we started off our career, design and photography was very much in demand. Our city, as a commercial magnet of the East, was full of work opportunities. Naturally, income from our work would become the backbone for the resurgence of the publication. And in early 1986, QIU YÍNG Number 25 was born. While Kwun Moon Nam, joined by another editor Yip Fai 葉輝 were responsible for the editorial content, Ka-sing and I took care of the selection of artists, and Tommy Li acted as the design chief. We agreed that the new QIU YÍNG would be designed in an accordion format, linking up eight 4 x 6 inch postcards. Each issue would feature the work of an artist and seven poems. The cover postcard would serve as the editorial page, while the remaining seven would be: one postcard, one poem. The publication would be printed in colours (most times a mix of spot colours), perforated, so each ‘page’ could be torn out and sent flying as a postcard. As a matter of fact, not too many readers wanted to use it as individual postcards, instead they wanted to keep the publication as a complete set, fully intact. There were also those who did not mind to get two copies and set free a few poems. Henceforth we had liberated poetry in its usual form, and incorporated it into our daily lives.
QIU YÍNG Issue 28 (front and back), 1986 (Postcard Period).
Special issue on the poetry of Leung Ping-Kwan with visual works by seven artists.
Publication format: 34x6 inches, accordion folded into 8 pages of 4”x6” postcard.
QIU YÍNG Issue 29, 1986. (Postcard Period).
Photography by Michael Chen
Poets in this issue: 關夢南,廖希,羅寄一,胡燕青,羅貴祥,古蒼梧,淮遠
QIU YÍNG Issue 31, 1986. (Postcard Period)
Wood-cut prints by Chinese artist Gu Yuan
Poets in this issue: 周禮賢,黃燦然,俞風,辛笛,蔡炎培,石斟蘭,葉輝
This Postcard Period (13 issues, from 25 to 37, 1986-88) continued for two years. In reexamining these issues, it appears clear to us in hindsight, that the publication had unintentionally chronicled that period of art and its concurrent activities. Pivotal art exhibitions such as Out of Context 外圍, Journey 游詩, and works by distinguished artists like Antonio Mak 麥顯揚 (1951-94), Yank Wong 黄仁逵 and Choy Yan Chi 蔡仞姿. It is not an overstatement to say that most of the poets and artists featured in the QIU YÍNG Postcard period are now major cultural figures, occupying an integral part of Hong Kong history. Though the publication ceased production in 1988, the experience of this Postcard Period was far-reaching, it lay down root and strengthened the idea for another publication: Dislocation NNHD (92-99), which in the nineties, influenced and triggered off the practice of contemporary photography in Hong Kong.
Promotion and Subscription card for the Postcard Period QIU YÍNG, 1986.
202mm x102mm, offset printing.
On verso of the card printed an introduction to the new format, on which Ka-sing wrote, "Let those who don't read poems read, who don't look at art look, and those who don't do either, do both."
Promotion poster for the launching (Postcard Period), 1986.
Hand-made, photographic paper 16x20 inches (damaged).
Exhibition Catalogue for Poetry and Perception QIU YÍNG SHI KAN 86
An exhibition presented by the Hong Kong Institute for Promotion of Chinese Cultural for QIU YÍNG SHI KAN, featuring a selection of poems and artworks from the first ten issues of the Postcard Period.
In 2003, the launch of QIU YÍNG Resurrection (秋螢復活刊) began with this matchbox, which was designed by the new committee for the publicity purpose, with the idea of passing down the torch.
After the discontinuance of publication in 1988, QIU YÍNG came back after an absence of fifteen years. The fifth attempt, also known as QIU YÍNG Resurrection Period (秋螢復活刊) had the longest life span. It lasted seven years, from 2003 to 2010, and a total of 84 issues were published. The year when the magazine was relaunched we were already living in Toronto, as new immigrants busily meeting our challenges and readjusting our lives. We were also not advised of the relaunch and missed the chance to get involved. This regenerated periodical was principally managed by Kwun Moon Nam, with five other committee members, including Yip Fai. It was designed as a book format, 8.25 x 5.75 inch, published as a monthly with 56 inside pages. The editorial shifted to focus on heavier literary contents, featuring more poems in each issue, design and artwork would just take a minor, and subordinate role. The renewed QIU YÍNG had shed its flashy appearance, to be replaced by a modest and practical demeanor.
A Road that forks in two
Kwun Moon Nam is eight years Ka-sing’s senior. They both love poetry and literature, but poetry is not the only thing that fortifies their friendship, the sharing of indelible memories of living in GuangZhou in their childhood, between the 50’s and 60’s has created a much deeper bond. GuangZhou, the most populous city of Southern China, is merely a two-hour train ride from Hong Kong, but this 130 kilometres distance had created two totally different habitats, one monotonously grey and orderly, the other, somewhat chaotic but colourful. Before the mid-nineties, anyone who rode the train across the two borders would not fail to notice the shift of mood and colour, which extended to even the smell in the air. The departure of QIU YÍNG from a genuine, well-crafted appearance to a demure, down-to-earth look showed different ideas and choices; the former focused on elevating art and creativity, the circle of influence never went too far beyond the elites and the well-educated group, the latter claimed poetry belonged to the masses, viewing it especially an important tool to educate a new generation of young writers, and the more it expanded its outreach, the more influential the publication would be. Kwun and his peers worked hard towards their conviction, their tireless commitment had produced a staggering 84 issues of QIU YÍNG in seven years. This achievement had surpassed many expectations, yet not without regret, as it was a poetry magazine designed and produced mostly to meet local demands and standard, it did not have the capability nor resource, and more importantly, the sophistication to raise Hong Kong poetry to a level on par with the world. It became just another poetry journal among the few that were published around that same time.
In retrospect, a third option had always existed. If the journal, without over-stretching on layout, art and design, could put more emphasis on the balancing act, to respect and pay more attention to the written words, it would’ve become a more proficient and professional publication. In 2011, a new bi-monthly publication Sound & Rhyme 聲韻詩刊 (later renamed Voice & Verse) emerged. It gathered strengths from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Inland China, and after churning out two years of publication, it obtained funding from the government. Economically stable and still in production, Voice & Verse has done it, attaining a level of accomplishment what both Kwan and Ka-sing was unable to fully achieve in QIU YÍNG. Shortcomings of young age, inexperience and overconfidence had taken its toll on us, and only in reassessing the pros and cons of each production period do we come to recognize that blind spot.
Another ten years have passed since the cessation of QIU YÍNG in 2010, we still speak fondly of and reminisce about the publication. But when talking about it, people seem to recollect QIU YÍNG hazily as poems with wings, words perching on the postcards. This deep and enduring impression, with the power of image preceding the power of words, is unfortunately, proved to be too relevant today.
QIU YÍNG issue 25, 1986 (front cover)
Photography by Holly Lee. Editorial on inside cover by 關夢南
Poets in this issue: 羅貴祥,顧城,何福仁,禾迪,康夫,李國威,馬若
QIU YÍNG issue 26, 1986 (front cover)
Etchings by Donna Lok. Editorial on inside cover by 李家昇
Poets in this issue: 梁秉鈞,秀實,韓牧,柳木下,古蒼梧,納西,蔡炎培
QIU YÍNG issue 27, 1986 (front cover)
Drawings by Yank Wong. Editorial on inside cover by 葉輝
Poets in this issue: 辛笛,迅清,飲江,顧工,陳德錦,銅土,秦天南
QIU YÍNG issue 28, 1986. (front cover)
A special issue on the poems by Leung Ping-Kwan 梁秉鈞.
Cover art by Donna Lok. Inside art: Tommy Li, Choy Yan-Chi, Lok Yin-Ping, Joe So, Ku Chiu-Ping, Lee Ka-sing.
Editorial on inside cover by Leung Ping-Kwan 梁秉鈞
QIU YÍNG issue 29, 1986 (front cover)
Photography by Michael Chen. Editorial on inside cover by 李家昇
Poets in this issue: 關夢南,廖希,羅寄一,胡燕青,羅貴祥,古蒼梧,淮遠
QIU YÍNG issue 30, 1986 (front cover)
Sculptures by Antonio Mak. Editorial on inside cover by 戴天
Poets in this issue: 鍾國強,鍾玲,何福仁,蔡其矯,韓牧,黃襄,顧工
QIU YÍNG issue 31, 1986 (front cover)
Wood-cut prints by Gu Yuan 古元. Editorial on inside cover by 王仁芸
Poets in this issue: 周禮賢,黃燦然,俞風,辛笛,蔡炎培,石斟蘭,葉輝
QIU YÍNG issue 32, 1986 (front cover)
Special issue on woman poets, organized by Donna Lok 駱笑平
Etching by Donna Lok. Editorial on inside cover by Donna Lok
Poets in this issue: 禾迪,吳煦斌,適然,石斟蘭,郭坤敏,銅土,舒婷
QIU YÍNG issue 33, 1986 (front cover)
Documentation of an installation of Choy Yan-Chi, photography by Holly Lee.
Editorial on inside cover by 羅貴祥
Poets in this issue: 關夢南,葉維廉,王寅,葉輝,梁秉鈞
QIU YÍNG issue 34, 1986 (front cover)
Photography by Alfred Ko. Editorial on inside cover by 葉輝
Poets in this issue: 何福仁,葉維廉,胡燕青,飲江,馬若,黃燦然,羅貴祥
QIU YÍNG issue 35, 1988 (front cover)
Out of Context exhibition, photography by Holly Lee
Editorial on inside cover by 黃繼持
Poets in this issue: 納西,葉輝,梁秉鈞,歐陽江河,葉辭,鄧阿藍,李英杰
QIU YÍNG issue 36, 1988 (front cover)
Drawings by Lau Chun. Editorial on inside cover by 張超羣
Poets in this issue: 柏樺,胡燕青,關夢南,飲江,韓牧,黃燦然,馮晏
QIU YÍNG issue 37, 1988 (front cover)
Photography by Lau Ching-Ping. Editorial on inside cover by Lau Ching-Ping 劉清平
Poets in this issue: 毛文羽,羅貴祥,王良和,秀實,孫文波,陸憶敏,康夫
PRAIRIE LITERARY, issue 3, July 1968, Ka-sing co-founded this publication when he was 14 years old.
From seed, womb to flowering
Through our long publication production history, let me just pick a pivotal period, focus on one publication - OP News, and elaborate on it. This publication, produced between 97 and 98, could very well reflect and sum up a portion of the photographic movements in Hong Kong during that decade. This well-presented, transparent-mat-varnished 8.5 x 11 inch black and white publication has only 8 pages, and a total number of six issues published from January 1997 to September 1998.
OP News was the fruit of DISLOCATION magazine (NuNaHeDuo 女那禾多 1992-99) and The Original Photograph Club (OPC 1994-99). To recap a little history, DISLOCATION (alias NNHD) was a monthly Hong Kong contemporary photography journal edited by Lee Ka-sing, Holly Lee and Lau Ching Ping (later joined by Patrick Lee and Blues Wong). Two years later, in 1994, OPC was initiated to facilitate the role of a Print Program (OP Editions), opening up a pathway for people to acquire photography in their collections.
Inaugural issue of DISLOCATION (NuNaHeDuo), January 1992.
OP News, working hand in hand with NNHD and OPC, carried the mission to disseminate ideas, news and development of photography in Hong Kong. Of equal importance, it informed the importance of collecting photographs, especially from local practitioners. Every issue, in its brief eight pages it published a main article, an artist’s profile, news about OPC and other related exhibition events. It had published five articles altogether, the first essay was On Collecting Photograph by Lee Ka-sing. For the second issue, Matthew Turner, who taught at the Polytechnic University’s School of Design from 1981 to 1994, was invited to contribute an article on Hong Kong Photography. The third article titled Hong Kong At The Cosmopolitan Crossroads was written by Norman Jackson Ford, a photographer and art educator based in Hong Kong. For the fourth issue, with permission from Tokyo Museum of Photography, we published an excerpt from the essay by Nakamura Hiromi on contemporary photography in Japan. We featured an article on the veteran photographer Ngan Chun Tung 顏震東 (1927-2005) in the fifth issue of OP News, written by yet another veteran photographer Mak Fung 麥烽 (1918-2009). By the time we reached the sixth issue, we decided to make use of the entire issue to feature the OP Editions Print Program. One hundred photographs were selected from the collection, and printed as thumb-nail images, filling up all six pages of the magazine. That was also the last issue of OP News. But we didn't stop there, in fact this very last issue leaded us to the path of publishing the full colour OP Print Program catalogue in 2002. It was a handy 8 x 5.5 inch brochure with over 200 works in 32 pages. It featured a wide array of photographs comprising of Canadian, Mexican, Chinese and Japanese artists.
OP, September, 2002. 8 x 5.5 inches, 32 pages.
In the first OP News (Issue 1/1) Ka-sing wrote an article On Collecting Photograph and shed some light on the history of the OPC.
“In 1992, we published ‘DISLOCATION’, a monthly journal on Hong Kong contemporary photography. Photo-collectors approached us to purchase original prints from works featured in the publication. There was a lack of an organized and systematic approach to the handling of photograph as fine art, including the awareness of archival standards and concept of issuing photographs in limited editions. This brought about the idea of OP Club - the virtual photo-gallery which photographers would observe all necessary conditions in photo-collecting. Besides the direct mail-order system of channelling original photographs, we have also held two successful exhibitions of our released prints at the Hong Kong Fringe Club during the end of 1995 and 1996. The Original Photograph Club has provided a most recognized channel offering local and overseas collectors an array of highly appreciated photographic work….”
OP Editions
The idea of the creation of OP Edition was a novel one. For the first time in Hong Kong, it had initiated a photographic print program which adhered to the standard and rules in photo-collecting. Ka-sing and I co-curated the program and attended all administrative and organizing work. It would be a quarterly print program, each quarter would feature ten photographers, each would be required to contribute an image in 20 editions, printed in the size of 8 by 10 inches. These prints we referred to as OP Editions. OP Editions followed closely the museum standard, it required photographers to submit their photographs as gelatin silver prints, cibachromes, colour-coupler prints, or alternative process like transfer prints. Besides promoting the practice of photo-collecting, it also acted as a channel for photographers to exchange their prints. In the Program, each contributor can choose some prints of his/her choice from the same issue they were being featured, whereas the remaining prints would be released to the market to support its operation. Since each photographer might have already set certain print size for their work, which was usually in a larger format, OP Edition prints could readily serve the purpose of a ‘sample print’ of their work. We published the quarterly OP Edition catalogues, organizing annual and thematic exhibitions in different venues. The whole idea really turned out well and set the scene for a positive photo-collecting environment. OP Editions continued to thrive until 1999. By that time there were already some 190 works, well over three thousand prints in the program.
OP Editions quarterly catalogues, 1995. 5.5 x 5.5 inches, 24 pages.
Gallery-on-Paper to Gallery-on-Borrowed-Spaces
In the introductory stage, there was no gallery space, the exhibition of OP Editions was featured within the quarterly catalogues. Soon we moved quickly to line up gallery space at the Fringe Club, a not-for-profit arts organization, and presented three successful OP Editions annual exhibitions there (1995, 96 and 97). In addition, we ventured with commercial venues such as NuConcepts, a design and modern furniture store to organize curated thematic exhibitions. If we describe the DISLOCATION publication, noting our earlier concept as a gallery-on-paper, then this was the period of gallery-on-borrowed-spaces, before we could actually secure an exhibition venue of our own.
OP annual exhibition (1997) at the Fringe Club gallery.
A few years before the first photo gallery in Hong Kong
The early stage of the DISLOCATION days was memorable. Ka-sing and I, Ching-Ping were like the three Musketeers, fighting unfavourable conditions to create suitable climate, which we hoped, could help and encourage self-expression in local photography. We used our photo studio as a base for such activities, earnings from our assignments were used to support DISLOCATION and OP Editions. We were energetic, full of survival skills, things were straight-forward with one common goal in mind - to discover and deliver the voice of our time. Those were the innocent and creative years, we endorsed artists of cross discipline to interact with each other, without prejudice, privileges and any market in concern.
Gallery as Home
At the end of 1997, when our family moved to Toronto, we decided to convert the studio in Hong Kong to a photo gallery. Ka-sing had to fly back and forth between the two cities to oversee the transitional procedure. Within a few months time, the former photo studio was converted into a gallery. On the second day of January in 1998, OP fotogallery, the first photography gallery in Hong Kong was officially born. The OP Editions exhibitions (1998 and 1999) were brought back there, to the gallery where we could now call home. There was more good news, DISLOCATION had received a publication grant from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council; on top of that, our proposal of NCP (NuNaHeDuo Centre of Contemporary Photography) had also been approved. NCP would utilize the OP fotogallery space to continue the discourse of photography. It would organize educational programs, artists’ talks, photographers meeting, monthly exhibitions and interact with local, as well as overseas communities. After years of active participation, the studio-turned-gallery, viewed by some as the birth place of contemporary Hong Kong photography, was in full swing.
OP fotogallery (January 1998 to March 2001) at Number 5 Prince Terrace, Hong Kong.
Grand opening of NuNaHeDuo Centre of Contemporary Photography on April 28, 1998. it was officiated by Vincent Chow, the chairman of Hong Kong Arts Development Council. The inaugural exhibition PLAYDIUM, was co-curated by Sabrina Fung and Lee Ka-sing. Four artists were featured: Hideo Suzuki, Lo Yin shan, Wilson Tsang and Wong Kai Yu.
The original idea of the photo gallery, in a certain degree, was inspired by Helen Gee, the founder of the first important photo gallery in New York - the legendary Limelight Gallery (1954-1961). Our departure from Hong Kong, apart from family reason, also gave us the opportunity to connect Hong Kong photography outside its boundary. The set up the OP fotogallery Toronto in 2000 (later changed to Lee Ka-sing Gallery) was aiming to promote and synchronize with the Hong Kong activities. Even though we landed on the wrong soil we persisted in running the Toronto gallery for almost eight years, bridging Asian and Canadian photography, again, employing only our personal resources.
Despite all the good ground work, and later supports, people always wonder why the Hong Kong photo projects didn’t last. In hindsight, for all the basic necessities and good wills the government funding offered, we are wondering, now, more than ever, whether it was truly a positive force. In the many years of self-support, we got through difficult stages, weighing out our strengths and weaknesses, we could and always would subsist on a lean level of survival. The grant was a welcoming one but did not guarantee its stability. The will to fight challenging climate had shifted to fight bureaucratic constraints. The organization committee gradually fell stagnant and dysfunctional. In mid-March of 2001, the OP fotogallery in Hong Kong presented Erotos by Araki Nobuyoshi, which was, in reality, the last picture show.
Gallery guest book, the last exhibition (EROTOS by Nobuyoshi Araki) at OP fotogallery, Hong Kong.
The missing Apollo
However, the sixth, which is the last issue of OP News, was full of hope and sunshine. It did not foresee its short life span but rather a rosy future of Hong Kong photography interacting with international communities. The cover photograph 'Male Torso', which featured a classic body portrait by Almond Chu, was exhibited during the millennium at Lee Ka-sing Gallery as an OP Editions print. In the opening, it captured the eye of an Italian visitor. Feeling a deep resonance and struck by the beauty of its exquisite black and white, he bought the print without a blink. The sweeping power of art, we immediately thought, was transboundary! After handing us his credit card, he added, “To me, I think of it as the missing sculpture of Apollo, its luscious, marble-like body gleams with light gushing out from the slit of a heavenly window…, I’m so thrilled, a moment beyond myself, nothing can elicit that feeling as much as this photograph…”. Yes, everything is connected, and that makes me believe there’s a spiritual side of Ka-sing’s love of publications, they are more than just papers, or binary digits, they hold multitudes, and essentials, something, everything we’d experienced and loved, our heartbeats.
OP NEWS 1/1 Issued date January 1997
Cover: OP Editions, 96 exhibition on site at the Fringe Club Gallery, Hong Kong •
An article On Collecting Photograph by Lee Ka-sing • A complete list of OP editions photographs published in 1995 • This Side Towards Lens (photo events and news) • Artist Profile: Yau Leung.
OP NEWS 1/2 Issued date April 1997
Cover: Photograph by So Hing Keung
An article On Hong Kong Photography by Matthew Turner • Announcement of OP Editions, 97 to be exhibited at NuConcepts in May • This Side Towards Lens (photo events and news) • Artist Profile: So Hing-Keung.
OP NEWS 1/3 Issued date July 1997
Cover: A Hong Kong Portfolio exhibition on site at the Hong Kong Convention Centre, May 15, 1997.
An article Hong Kong at the Cosmopolitan Crossroads by Norman Jackson Ford • Announcement of A Hong Kong Portfolio exhibition at the Hong Kong Convention Centre and the Fringe Club Gallery • This Side Towards Lens (photo events and news) • Artist Profile: Karl Chiu.
OP NEWS 1/4 Issued date December 1997
Cover: Photograph by Yamashita Masahiko
An article on Contemporary Photography in Japan by Nakamura Hiromi • Announcement of the inauguration of the OP fotogallery in January 1998 • This Side Towards Lens (photo events and news) • Obituary: Yau Leung (1941-1997).
OP NEWS 2/1 Issued date March 1998
Cover: Photograph by Ngan Chun Tung
An article on Ngan Chun Tung by Mak Fung • Streetwalk, Hong Kong at OP fotogallery opening photographs • This Side Towards Lens (photo events and news).
OP NEWS 2/2 Issued date September 1998
Cover: Photograph by Almond Chu
An announcement on the opening of NCP (NuNaHeDuo Centre of Photography) • This Side Towards Lens (photo events and news) • Thumb nail catalogue of a hundred prints from the OP Editions.
Back-cover of the first four issues of OP News - an announcement of the release of "50 HONG KONG CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHERS" (1996), a CD-rom published by OPC, edited by the committee of NuNaHeDuo Centre of Contemporary Photography.
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Retracing the few postcards I received in 2020, I especially like the Sugar cane stems postcard that Glenn sent me in April. Since I mistook the plants for bamboos, it was even better, like collecting fresh breeze, coming along with the sweet sound of music. And winding back to the Winter of 2019, I received a minimal yet very beautiful card from Irina. It came not as a postcard, but as a greeting card tucked inside an envelope. Snow! The first impression I had was snow, and the tire tread patterns on snowy streets. It seemed relevant. But upon further investigation, I spotted them as impressions made by placing twigs on paper and running through a printmaking press. Irina has been playing with print making for years, she is adventurous and, never shies away from experimentation.
In late Autumn 2019, while Ka-sing was away in Hong Kong, our friends Zunzi 尊子, a political cartoonist, his wife Chanya 陳也, a writer and their son Yud came to Toronto. We met up for dinner at Nunu, an Ethiopian restaurant just around the corner on Queen Street West. When Ka-sing and I left Hong Kong, their son was not yet born. It was wonderful to see him now as a delicate teenager. After they went back to Hong Kong I received a postcard from Chanya:
"Holly, me + son has returned to Hong Kong, old Zun was still minding his show business in the West Bank of America. News indicated that Toronto has big snowfall, hope your door hasn’t been blocked off yet! :) From Seymour Road to Gladstone Avenue, the way you treated us is still with the same old warmth. Thx! Hoping to meet again. Take care, say hello to Ka-sing. Chanya 17 Nov. 2019."
The postcard Chanya sent was probably a memorial card for the June-fourth Tiananmen incident. One might not have any idea what the numbers 87( )5( ) mean. The Chinese characters literally mean “Forbidden to say doesn’t mean to have forgotten”. A silent but unyielding way to protest against autocracy. However, on the first day of our existence we knew it as an involuntary birth, its young roots subject easily to, and affected heavily by fair or adverse weather. Destiny has never been on our hands.
The Winter of 2019 looked vastly different from this coming one. We won’t be able to enjoy coffee on the patios worry-free, like these two friends chatting, just a foot or two apart. In fact, it is advised, better no contact, better not to meet at all. This makes the card Shelley sent us last year all the more memorable. For many years, Shelley has made drawing an integral part of her life. She draws everyday, producing endless stories of our city and its inhabitants. Her works are light, whimsical, reflecting our inner and outer lives with child-like metaphorical strokes.
Back in the Summer of 2012, I received what looked like a promotional thing but turned out to be a postcard from Irina. The postcard was sent from St. John’s Newfoundland, where Irina and Gary spent the Summer there in a B&B, in exchange of the free stay they had to perform the host’s duty, like house keeping, and cooking breakfast for guests. On the card she wrote:
"Roughing it on the Boat House - not hot, ocean traffic. Helping with the Rock Bottom B&B. Brought wrong clothes overwhelmed with the heat - looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again soon. Regards from much water - Irina + G"
Irina's writings is pure pleasure. I can imagine her sipping a cup of coffee as she wrote, with a box of water colours on the side, she signed it with her iconic, Greek and Picasso inspired goddess profile. And on the front of the picture postcard, you can see the Admiral’s Adventure B&B nestled under the cliff of a hill. Oh Summer, do you have to go?
Years ago, I believe it might be around early Autumn, Han Xu sent me a postcard that he drew. The drawing was the Little Free Library on Close Avenue, the street where he lives. He was full of happy spirit, so was the scene depicting the small, bird-house like library with some books inside, standing in the centre against the sumptuous backdrop of green and gold. He wrote a few cheery words on his thoughts:
"Every time walk towards in anticipation. Every time arrive at happy encountering. Every time return in hope of revisiting." (The picture: On Close Avenue, passing by a library)
Then a few months later, towards the New Year, another card from Han Xu arrived. It was a New Year’s card, with a bonsai pine celebrating January, celebrating New Spring. He wrote and signed his name Han Xu 韓旭 in Chinese, decorated it with a small square red seal.
In June 2004 a postcard came from the Hauptbanhof of Zürich, but I recognized the picture as the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Yes indeed, in the foreground was a sculpture by the Taiwanese sculptor Chu Ming. The sculpture or the ‘man’ was practising Tai Chi in front of the Brandenburg Gate. The photographer and the sender of the postcard was PK (Leung Ping -Kwan 梁秉鈞). Around that time he was in Zürich University as a visiting scholar. His daughter Anwen was also with him in the trip. Taking place more or less the same time was his photography exhibition and poetry reading East West Matters in Bern and Frankfurt. In the card he wrote briefly:
"Greetings from Anwen and Ping-Kwan in Zürich! Anwen is coming soon!"
Ka-sing almost got to meet him in Paris, as they collaborated on the Poetry and Photography exhibition ‘De ci de là des choses’. It did not happen because he was busy taking care of the gallery in Toronto. In any case, the exhibition proceeded without Ka-sing. Nevertheless, ‘De ci de là des choses’ was arranged to exhibit again in 2006 at Saorge Monastery in the Southern part of France, which Ka-sing, giving a second chance, was still unable to attend.
"Iris, we saw these big cats in Canada. There are way too many people who love cats in North America. But it won’t be easy for you to find them on streets, since almost all of them live in people’s sweet home. These two big cats just wander off for a stroll and discovered by us. They agreed to give this picture to the little girl in Hong Kong who really really loves cats - as a gift. Love from mommy Toronto uncle Fai’s home Dec 26, 1991."
We bought this card when we visited uncle Fai (Tommy Li) in Toronto 1991, six years before we moved to Canada. Oh, right now, at this very moment of writing and to my surprise, I just find out that this Blue Tigers drawing is by Blair Drawson, an illustrator friend whom we met after we immigrated to Toronto! After we set up the galleries on Gladstone Avenue, we had even shown his lovely work of Birds. Small small world.
This cat postcard sent by Glenn was not dated, the barely visible mail press mark facing the cat also bears no date. But I remember it came before the Sugar Cane postcard, so it must be in 2019. Sometime that year, Kai and Glenn came over for dinner. After dinner I showed him a book called From the Ocean of Paintings: India’s Popular Paintings 1589 to the Present. He was surprised to find an image of an almost identical cat of the postcard he sent me weeks ago. Well, there is more story behind. This genre of drawing comes from West Bengal, Kalighat, where this particular iconography of the cat is served as an illustration of the proverb “Fair game” and as a satire on the hypocrisy of some devotees of Vishnu who professed to be vegetarians but in fact consumed meat in private. There are many versions of the calico cats. They may be holding different kinds of fish, a mouse, a prawn or even a parrot. In the postcard Glenn obtained from the gift shop of V&A the cat is holding a fish in its mouth, whereas in my book, the cat is holding a prawn, which at first glance and again out of my usual carelessness, I mistook it for a green carrot.
Participating artists in OUT OF CONTEXT:
Adevor, Antonio MAK (麥顯揚 ), CHOI Ronald Yeekie, CHOI Yanchi (蔡仞姿), EPOXY, FUNG Manyee (馮敏兒), HO Hingkay Oscar, (何慶基), Holly LEE (黃楚喬), Jim SHUM (沈聖德), Josh HON (韓偉康), Larry DEMING, LAU Gukzik (劉掬色), LEE Ka-sing Wingo (李家昇), Ming FAY (費明杰), Robert FUNG (馮萬剛), Robert O'BRIEN (白禮仁), Sunny PANG (彭錦耀), Susi KRAMER, Tommy Wong (王志強), WONG Yankwai Yank (黃仁逵), YEUNG Sauchurk Ricky (楊秀卓)
OUT OF CONTEXT exhibition catalogue
Holly Lee
The original photograph for OUT OF CONTEXT catalogue cover
Gelatin silver photograph, 8x19.5 inches
Photographed and printed in 1987
(left frame) from left to right: Antonio Mak, Robert O’Brien, Susi Kramer, Yank Wong, Tommy Wong, Fung Man-Yee, Lau Gukzik, Ricky Yeung, Holly Lee, Jim Shum, Lee Ka-sing.
(right frame) from left to right: Tommy Wong, Fung Man-Yee, Lau Gukzik, Ricky Yeung, Holly Lee, Lee Ka-sing, Jim Shum
A suite of 14 vintage photographs by Holly Lee
Taken on-site at the OUT OF CONTEXT exhibition
Photographed and printed in 1987
8x10 inches gelatin silver photographs, signed and titled on front
(work of Antonio Mak)
(work of Robert O’Brien)
(work of Susi Kramer)
(work of Lee Ka-sing)
(work of Choi Yan-chi)
(work of Fung Man-Yee)
(work of Ricky Yeung)
(work of HO Hingkay Oscar)
(work of Lau Gukzik [left] and Holly Lee [right])
(work of Ming Fay)
(work of EPOXY group, New York)
An article on OUT OF CONTEXT, published at Bok Yit Monthly, written in Chinese by Holly Lee
(1987)
尊子 Zunzi (cartoonist)
梅卓燕 Mui Cheuk-Yin (Dancer, Choreographer)
黃仁逵 Yank Wong (Painter)
鄧達智 William Tang (Fashion Designer)
唐景森 Tong King Sum (Sculptor)
彭錦耀 Sunny Pang (Dancer, Choreographer, Performing artist)
One very interesting topic in photography, for me, is self-portrait. In the past, Ka-sing and I had been invited several times to produce our own portraits. The two self-portraits published here was another attempt in 2002, featured in a group show organized by Gallery 44 in Toronto.
What do people expect to see in a self-portrait, especially one taken by the photographer himself, whose normal practice is just being an observer? Would he see only a mirror in front of him, his true “flipped” likeness, or would he work on a staged, preferred image to present to the viewer? That is a very interesting question. Sometimes, the photographer may decide to disappear altogether - hanging in limbo, or take the form of a piece of crumbed up newspaper. Could the fact be established then, if one leafs through pictures of self-portraits, he is looking simultaneously, through every taker’s mind and body?
In my 2002 self-portrait, I picked up a scene that’s been stuck in my head for many years. Sometime in 1975, I rented a room from a lady and became her housemate. Her husband was a sailor, and went often out to sea. My room was small, but it had a window which gave me the most extraordinary view - thousands of small wooden houses cascading down the foot of the hill. They were built by Chinese refugees who occupied the hill at the end of the 50s and subsequently transforming it into an empire of wooden huts. At night, I could always see millions of eyes laughing, and blinking at me. I used to put a formica square folding table (now considered retro…) in front of the window as my working desk. I loved working there, looking straight out of the window and getting lost in the magical forest of a thousand eyes. I even wrote a poem for the scene, saying that every night I was meeting a giant Christmas tree. So for the self-portrait here, I was trying to recreate this dramatic episode, only this time I wanted to look out to the cosmos, to meet and greet the twinkle twinkle little stars. Yet being in the city, in Trinity Bellwoods Park it’s hard to see any stars. Instead they winked and glittered in my imagination, and I could only hear leaves rustling in the gentle breeze.
Lee Ka-sing, self portrait, 2002
8x8 inches, archival pigment print
For the self-portrait, there is certain similarity to the way that I worked comparing to Ka-sing. We worked from memories. Around 2002, Ka-sing was working on an exhibition, a series he called ‘dot hong kong’, which he used the concept of re-photographing his old takes, to find new vision from originally existed images. Thus, for two years he continued to explore the idea through another exhibition, and realized the work in ‘The Language of ‘Fruits and Vegetable’, a collaboration piece with Leung Ping-kwan in 2004. In this way of working, I like to think, over the years the chef had prepared many delicious dishes, and finally gets time to sit down, to taste, and walk through from where he’d obtained the ingredients, in what way he’d cooked, while happily recall people and friends who had shared the experience. In this extremely slow tasting process, everything must have been delicately examined, and the undertaking, deeply satisfying. In Ka-sing’s self-portrait, my blur face was in the front. That also makes me aware that, I am never too far from the corners of his mind.
The third millennium started off well, skipping the Y2K problem, but only a year and half after, the horrendous 9/11 occurred. In 2000, Toronto’s Mayor Bad Boy Lastman followed suit Chicago’s Cows on Parade, to place throughout the city 326 life-sized moose sculptures, all decorated by local artists. That was a happier time, our lives were simpler and things were full of hope. But I envied Tomoko for her mobility, doing things that I’d love to do, but couldn’t, like visiting decades old historical Chinese buildings and meeting interesting people…I followed her footsteps to Shanghai, Anhui…yet in reality all I could travel to was Toronto, I moved to a new address, I followed some moose in different parts of the city. There was no more correspondence between us after the moose talk. Perhaps she did send me another postcard, which would be no. 10, still using the old address. Even then I shouldn’t have missed it because I remembered clearly I’d forwarded all letters to the downtown address for a few months. In any case, the true reason for the cease of communication was not sure. Perhaps we were both too busy, and as you know how busy people could miss a lot of things that they’d later regret on. Or perhaps, the postman was also a philatelist! And in a moment of weakness, he had taken the postcard himself, the one that’s missing, the one we’d have labelled it number 10.
Nunavut (Holly)
是四、五月間發生的事罷。Nunavut 成為特區。看了Philip Glass 的 Monster of Grace,後來也明白了加國早期歐洲移民在海上搬遷的奇境。屋子都變成了大船。Nunavut 人的舞姿真好看,邊打鼓邊跳舞。在台下看 Philip Glass 和 Atom Egoyan 的對話,音樂和影像徐徐起落,彼此都在追尋對方的軌跡。
(translation) It happened around April, or May? Nunavut has become a territory. Saw Monsters of Grace by Philip Grass, and understood later on, the amazing scene of how early European immigrants moved to Canada. Houses all became big boats. The Nunavut danced wonderfully, they beat their drums as they danced. Sitting in the auditorium watching Philip Grass interacting with Atom Egoyan, music and images rose and sank slowly, searching for each other’s traces.
Celebration of the establishment of PRC (Tomoko)
How are you? This postcard is made in North Korea. Only 1 month left till millennium. Wow! Macau handover will be soon, and communist 50 years anniversary in China was on 1st of Oct. So many historical memorial days recently. Now I’m working on photo project of people who are living in Hutong, (old BJ style house) which is disappearing. The government announced all Hutong except around Forbidden City gonna be torn down till next few years. god! Right now a big Hutong area which has a few hundreds years history is being torn down. Just next to Tiananmen. Old people who lived there like 80 years have seen all the Chinese modern history like the picture of this postcard. But the history changes. Those people need to move new building even though they don’t want. China is changing. People’s thinking changes must change very fast. Love Tomoko.
The envelope Tomoko used to send the Korea made postcard. Below was a note she attached within.
Dear Holly
I didn’t know that you haven’t got my first one. Probably it’s stolen Pls let me know if you get this by E-mail tomoko.kikuchi@yahoo.com
View from Austin Drive, Markham (Holly)
It’s great to receive your postcard. Sorry to have missed your first one. The back is a view from our balcony. The year was 1997, the first year we arrived Canada. Life here is as expected, not as 密度高 as in Hong Kong and China. I’m experiencing another kind of life, the “freedom” and space as never experienced. That gives me more time to reflect and think of how different cultures come to meet at this point. Canadians have never ceased to respect the seniors. Though some historical buildings were torn down once they quickly learn to preserve the rest. I hope some of the 胡同 can really survive. Love Holly. (Dec. 13, 1999)
你有否機會看見攝影朋友例如榮榮?
EC 十二月會來加拿大
今天風不大北京開始下雪了嗎?
有否機會看到你影胡同人照片?
Translation of Chinese text in red, written vertically from left to right - Do you have a chance to meet photographer friends like Rong Rong? EC will come to Canada in December. Today is not so windy has Beijing begun to snow? Is there a chance to see your pictures of the Hutong folks?
TVBros. (Tomoko)
No. 2 from BJ
Dear Holly
Happy new year! How you gonna spend Chinese new year in Canada? I spent Millennium in H.K. with EC. This year I will spend Chinese new year at Beijing. It seems quite boring to spend new year in BJ (!) I need to work in BJ. In BJ or Northern China people get together & eat dumpling. I rather prefer to spend Chinese New Year at rural area. Last year, I went to Hakka village in Fujian province. I stayed at earth building called 土樓 of round buildings. Very unique buildings. I want to visit festivals which will be held 2 weeks after Chinese New Year. Keep in touch! Love Tomoko
« this year is dragon! (I couldn’t find one so I put this) It’s from Mongolia.
High School Fashion (text from front)
I seldom miss Japan but every new year’s eve and first of January I miss Japan. Only new year & the season of cherry blossom I miss Japan. How about you do you miss H.K.? How is Iris? She must have grown up. If she’s in Japan she must wear like this. « This uniform looks like my high school uniform.
Performance Fleece Old Navy (Holly)
Dear Tomoko,
So this is March already. Couldn’t believe I live to see 2000 - such a fantastic year. Beijing is competing with Toronto to host Olympic 2008. Beijing stands a good chance. I couldn’t do a lot of traveling with life and work here but hopefully can do that real soon. Iris is fine. She’s happy with all her friends here. (5) «our numbering system. Please write me Postcard 6 when u receive this. This is a postcard I’ve got from a Thai kitchen in New York, free of charge. It feels like 洗衣粉 ad. to me.
Via Air Mail, Yayoi Kusama (Tomoko)
Dear Holly
How are you? I start to feel Spring is coming in BJ. It’s nice feeling. I’ve just come back from H.K. (I stayed there almost 3 weeks) I met Patrick & I show him my photo story of comfort ladies. Next time I go to H.K. I should scan them and send by E-mail. I still visit them every 3 or 4 month (they live in 山西 ) It’s good to show my work to other people and sometimes they give me good ideas or what I hadn’t realize. And now I try to use different light & do portrait in my office’s studio (They have many broncolor) It’s good practice. By the way if Olympic 2008 in BJ, BJ gonna take the place …I hope see you soon in H.K. Love Tomoko
Flower Boats off to Market (Holly)
Dear Tomoko, (7) from Toronto
Spring is here and we still have snow this week! But I know warm weather won’t be far away and we still have light after 7 pm, unlike the cold winter months when 4 will be like 8 or 9 at night. I know its warmer in Beijing and Hong Kong will now be hot and humid. Are you very busy at work? Manage to continue your Personal Project? I’m going to be in a group show in October 2000 in Hong Kong Heritage Museum and am now trying hard to begin with my photo project. Ka-sing and I work a lot on websites these days. But I really miss photography. “Flower Boats off to Market” This art work is from a Toronto artist Saskia Wassing-Shepher, 9x5 in., 1998, embroidery on organza Toronto is also bidding for Olympic 2008 and they've just rolled the campaign out with a maple leaf bursting into Fireworks. I will send u something on this campaign next time. Meanwhile carry on with the good work! Love Holly
Addition text on front: We love your high school fashion postcard, it's so cute! Iris is doing fine and all of us miss U! You're such a good friend with energy & heart. When do we have a chance to see your new photos? I want to see the "comfort women" series.
FRIEND (Tomoko)
Dear Holly 8! (6)??
How are you?
I’ve never gotten your letter since April, I was wondering whether you missed my no 6 postcard. I have been ill for a month but now I’m ok. I went to Shanghai in July and Anhui to see old buildings (dwellings) They were really beautiful and I really enjoyed. (I send you postcard next time) And Shanghai…!I was really surprised and amazed how much it changed within 5 years! It looks like almost NY! and changed dramatically from old style communists city to such a impressive urban city. Keep in touch! Love Tomoko
Moose (Holly)
(9) Hello Tomoko
I did get your No. 6 and returned No. 7 to you. It was a drawing with two boats. So your last postcard is No. 8. We had a splendid Summer in Toronto and the city is filled with moose. Anyway we have moved downtown. Please note the change of address. Are you still working in the photo studio? How is your project coming? I will show you new work soon. I miss 上海 一切安好 平安祝福 Love Holly Oct. 9, 2000
(translation - I miss Shanghai, hope everything is fine, be safe and our blessings)
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Single side, 89mm x 53mm, circa 1974-75.
The first name card.
The word game
In the years pursuing we lived together, writing, photographing and chasing puppet shows and performing artists in the after-hours of our day jobs. Shortly after, I quit my bank job, used up my pension to rent a 500 square feet studio in a small back street called Lan Kwai Fong in the central part of Hong Kong. While working diligently as self-trained fledgling photographers, we were still in touch with our literally friends, and at the back of this name card I found in the Rolodex, the telephone number I wrote down of ah Nam, a blue collar and self-taught poet. He was to become one of the most celebrated poets in Hong Kong. In 1979, we moved up to nearby Wyndham street, where we used the name Holly & Wingo Lee Studio. Name card index albums and boxes were used extensively during those years, and two more name cards demonstrated this. In this yellow name card is my writing of the residential and work number of Leung Kui-Ting, who was an artist, as well as my teacher at the evening design school I attended in 1972. On the other card featuring Wingo working, Danny Yung wrote down his phone number and address for us. Danny is a founding member and co-artistic director of Zuni Icosahedron 進念, an esteemed Hong Kong-based avant-garde theatre founded in 1982. Thirty-some years after, we met Danny again in Toronto, when he came to open his exhibition “Blank Boy Canvas” at the Gladstone Hotel in 2015.
Double side, 85mm x 45mm, trimmed, circa 1978.
Name card used in Lan Kwai Fong. The poet Ah Nam's name and phone number was hand-written on the back by Holly.
Double side (back side with plain light yellow), 92mm x 51mm, circa 1979.
Holly's hand writing of Leung Kui-Ting's residence and work number on the back of the card.
Double side, 89mm x 52mm, corner trimmed, circa 1980.
On both sides, photographs showing Ka-sing working in studio. (left) Danny Yung's hand writing of his phone number and address.
As I was always wondering how the name Zuni Icosahedron 進念二十面體 for this experimental theatre originated, people must have also wonder where did the name of the Hong Kong photography magazine NuNeHeDuo 女那禾多 (1992-1999, also known as Dislocation) come from. “Zuni”, if we googled, is a colour between blue and green, the colour value is #008996. Icosahedron is a twenty-sided object. Together it projects two essential visual elements: colour and form, invoking bodily movements in theatre works. For Dislocation Magazine - a contemporary photography journal, we wanted to express shifting, and delicate movements 移, like silver halide crystals dancing on film when exposed to light, like the way a beautiful woman elegantly passing by 娜. In Chinese we chose to use 娜移 nuó yí for such an impression. And furthermore, as an experiment, and for fun we split the two Chinese characters 娜移 into four individual characters that became 女那禾多 Nu Na Hé Duo, which is phonetically Mandarin, and when translated word by word into English they are: woman, that, grain, abundance. It was the related yet unrelated elements we found fascinating, images interplayed with words, and words conjuring up images. In the same manner, if I wanted to be naughty today, I would describe and translate into Chinese Zuni Icosahedron’s theatre as a collaborated dance: 騷離 愛共耍輕進. Zuni, love, together, play, lightly, forward. The Chinese characters suggest such playful imageries, like a 'push push' in aerobic dance. And by the way, just as it's not confusing enough, when we read the name out aloud, to be in line with the English sound, it should be read in CANTONESE, the more ancient and popular dialect in Southern China.
Single side, 85mm x 50mm, circa 1996.
NuNaHéDuo name card - Holly Lee.
Single side, 85mm x 50mm, circa 1996.
NuNaHéDuo name card - Ka-sing Lee.
Up and down Castle Road
In 1982, our studio was relocated further uphill, to 35 Castle Road. It was not ideal and we had to move again either at the end of the year or in early 1983. Despite the negative impact it was the place where I conceived my daughter, and began motherhood months later. During that period we became acquainted with the Illustration Workshop (the most cutting-edge design team at that time), and had collaborated with them for some commercial work. While working in this studio I had a beautiful name card designed by Philip Kwok (1955-2009 郭立熹), a prominent member of the Illustration Workshop. He borrowed the idea from the Polaroid SX-70 camera, and asked that the name card to be printed in the exact squarish format of the Polaroid instant film. The image was bold red and yellow with hints of black and blue, a showy, flashy name card that I still love very much today. I only used it for a short time because we were moving again.
Envelope, 222mm x 108mm, circa 1982.
Designed by Philip Kwok of the Illustration Workshop. The complete set of design also included the letter sheet printed in full colour.
Single side, 90mm x 108mm, circa 1982. (right) Polaroid SX-70 original, 90mmx108mm, photographed by Philip Kwok.
Philip's design of using the Polaroid SX-70 camera as Holly's name card was based on her practice as a photographer. Since the card was the exact same size of an SX-70 film, the name card could possibly be ejected out from an SX-70 instant camera. We had tried. It worked out perfectly!
Single side, 92mm x 65mm, circa 1982.
Ka-sing designed this for himself, as an extension to the Polaroid concept. He photographed a section of the Polaroid 4x5 film holder. Since he started his career as a professional photographer, he had used 4x5 view camera for most of his assignments, but the format at one point had climbed up to 8x10 inch.
Downhill, at the foot of Castle Road number 3, we changed the company name to Camera Works holly & wingo. The new stationery design was by another Illustration Workshop member, who was also a good friend of ours - Tommy Li (1954-2016 李錦煇). Wingo suggested to put a poem in our moving notice and went on to select a poem by Xi Xi (西西). It seemed, as he recalls now, a subconscious statement then to the working attitude and direction we were heading to. In a way, Tommy also revealed his influence, his east vs. west consciousness by using more Chinese in his design, say setting the English alphabets vertically, from top to bottom (like writing in traditional Chinese way). However, some could argue in real traditional Chinese writing direction, a column should start from right to left. In this case, our address was read from left to right. but we didn’t mind. The design of our name cards at this stage was so neutral, so ‘shared’ that there was only the company name in the front, and at the back, we each signed our names to identify.
Double side, 90mm x 55mm, circa 1983.
This name card was designed by Tommy Li. Ka-sing knew Tommy since the beginning of the 70s. They were really best friends. On verso, Ka-sing's signature, as an element for the design.
Double side, 90mm x 55mm, circa 1983.
Holly Lee's signature.
Moving notice on letter sheet, 208mm x 296mm, circa 1983.
A moving notice letter sent to clients and friends. Studio letter sheet with Xi Xi's poem Can We say on the right.
Publication, 203mm x 153mm, Published by ZEPHYR Press, 2016.
not written words, a collection of poems by Xi Xi, translated from Chinese by Jennifer Feeley. The poem Can We say was used in our studio letter sheet.
Double side, 95mm x 56mm, circa 1986. Designed by Tommy Li Kam Fai.
The image was a swimming pool backdrop. It was used for an ad for Palmolive Soap. Here's the story, an ad agency shot the commercial film for Palmolive Soap at a Los Angeles swimming pool, and after shooting, they needed a still photo for print advertising, which they forgot to take. It was too late, they were already back in Hong Kong. The agency approached us for a solution. Our task was to recreate the scene and shoot the same shot with a model. This was the set before shooting.
Double side, 95mm x 56mm, circa 1986. Designed by Tommy Li Kam Fai.
The image was taken from an editorial assignment for the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. Ka-sing always got his freehand in handling assignments.
Towards the end of the 80’s we attempted to set up another base in New York. It was precisely at that time Wingo was reignited by his eastern identity, and decided to use only Ka-sing, his Chinese name. I love my English name given by my uncle and I wanted to keep it. So the company had become Cameraworks, Ka-sing & Holly. Oh, by the way, a little note on the name ‘Camera Work’, a name we had associated with from the 80s to 90s. We both admired and got inspired by the photographic journal Alfred Stieglitz published from 1903 to 1917 known as Camera Work, a simple but direct name telling eloquently its very nature.
Double side, 89mm x 53mm, circa 1989-90.
At this stage, we had two addresses in the name cards, one in Hong Kong and one in New York. The image in this card was a portion from the photograph Hong Kong Ni Hao. This was an editorial photograph taken in 1988 for the Mandarin Oriental Magazine.
Double side, 89mm x 53mm, circa 1989-90.
The image in this name card was from Holly's 89 • The Golden Lotus • Footsteps of June series.
Last Stop
By the time we moved again, around the beginning of 1991, our name had a slight change, to Ka-sing, Holly & Cameraworks. The studio moved to a much smaller space at Prince Terrace, just 3 minutes walk from our old place. It would be our last anchor in Hong Kong. The next, which would be in 1997, and our final move in the city, would be across the oceans, over 7800 miles, to Kanata.
Rewinding back to Hong Kong in 1991, through a mortgage we bought a ground floor flat of a four-storey building at number 5, Prince Terrace. It was the first time we owned a permanent studio, though it was a bit small. In this small studio we had a very productive period. In some miraculous ways, we’d done some commercial assignments that could have required a much larger workplace. Also at that time I was contacted by the US photo agency Black Star to shoot corporate portraits in Asia, so we had to put two contacts in our name cards, one in Hong Kong and one in the US. Upon closer look I am also reminded of another interesting fact of the past - that was when we first started to use electronic mails. They were slow, and not yet popular. In fact, today we’d take it as a joke about the snail-crawling speed of the computer. Using Photoshop in those early days was a pain in the neck, after each click and command for a task came a long wait, and you had to kill time by resuming the novel you didn’t finish the night before.
Double side, 95mm x 51mm, circa 1992.
An image created for the cover of Lau Kin-Wai's book published in 1992, on art criticism.
Double side and centre-fold, (upper) image, (lower) inside, 176mm x 44mm, circa 1992.
Double side, 86mm x 112mm, circa 1992.
For this name card, the design used Holly's transferred images from her photographs of a doll and a mannequin, which were originally taken for editorial purpose. By the time we left Hong Kong we gave the mannequin to Almond Chu, another photographer friend of ours.
Single side, 88mm x 54mm, circa 1991-2.
Single side, 89mm x 53mm, circa 1991-2.
Our design began to use two symbols signalling two identities. "Star" for Ka-sing because the character 昇 in his Chinese name is arise, and the star 星 has exactly the same sound. For that reason, 'star' appeared in a lot of his photographs. A signature, in his own word. The globe and circle were, Holly's.
Single side, 90mm x 44mm, circa 1991-2.
The word photo-illustration was used frequently in those days. It described the kind of photography (usual incorporated some graphic elements), distinguishing it from street, table-top or product photography.
Single side, 90mm x 44mm, circa 1991-2.
Double side, 89mm x 57mm, circa 1993.
This image was for a Christmas card, a combination of a photogram (by Holly) and linework elements from Ka-sing's photo-illustration. Those linework collages, he named it collectively as : The Thinbit studio series".
Single side, 89mm x 53mm, circa 1994-5.
Holly did this portrait of Jinx originally for her client/friend Lilian Tang for a Christmas card. By circumstance and fate it lit up the whole series of Hollian Thesaurus she produced from 1994 to 2000.
Single side, 89mm x 54mm, circa 1995.
One from a suite of four images for the OP Editions catalogue in 1995. The X (cross) is one of Ka-sing's favourite elements.
In this street level studio, the terrace stretched about thirty feet across, to the opposite street facing another row of buildings with different heights. Due to the inaccessibility of any commutable street, car traffic was non-existing. That meant we could enjoy the extra open space outside our studio. That was also the reason why we loved this place, quiet and quite peaceful. Simultaneously this was the place where we produced the first contemporary photography magazine of Hong Kong - NuNaHeDuo (Dislocation 1992-1999), and developed the concept of marketing Hong Kong photography through the setting up of The Original Photograph Club (1994-1999), released limited editions from The OP Print Program as OP editions. But before the OP editions, we used the initial name Cameraworks edition, with a logo designed by David Lui. We met David in New York, and after working there for a while he returned to Hong Kong to continue his career. The name Cameraworks edition was used for a very short period before replaced by OP editions.
Single side, 88mm x 53mm, circa 1995.
A rare card printed but never used. McCulloch left Hong Kong for family matter, the artist project didn't happen. But we started to represent some of the Hong Kong artists.
Double side, 85mm x51mm, circa 1994.
CameraworksEdition was used for a very brief period. In 1995 we began the identity of OP.
Double side, 85mm x51mm, circa 1994.
Single side, 88mm x 54mm, circa 1996.
The images applied to this series of OP name cards were photograms made by Holly. A suite of four photograms were used for the covers of the quarterly OP Editions catalogues.
Single side, 88mm x 54mm, circa 1996.
DIGI (1994-1996) was also another magazine we launched during the period. The editorial content was purely imageries created by computer. As I was writing this piece Ka-sing mentioned something quite interesting. He said his use of the ultra wide-angle 20mm lens in the early days was largely influenced by the Polish-born American photographer Ryszard Horowitz, and that was in the 70s. By the time we created DIGI, Ryszard Horowitz was well known and recognized for his surreal visual compositions and skill for digital imaging. So when he was invited by the Hong Hong Institute of Professional Photographers to come to Hong Kong as a judge, we grasped the chance to interview him, and published the content in the second issue of DIGI. In contrast to Dislocation, the editorial content in DIGI was more global, and gave us many opportunities to collaborate with overseas artists.
Single side, 88mm x 50mm, circa 1995.
DIGI was published from 1994 to 1996.
In the meanwhile I started a venture with Yoshiko, a Japanese writer and musical event organizer based in Hong Kong, to promote and represent visual artists in Asia. It didn’t work out as we did not have a focus, and we each had already too much on our plates. By the second half of the 90s, the OP Club, which ran the OP Print Program had considerable success in creating a photo market in Hong Kong, and a year after we left the city, in January 1998 we felt confidently to open the first photography gallery in Hong Kong - The OP fotogallery. In April the same year NCP, NuNaHeDuo Centre of Photography was established with partial fund from the Hong Kong Art Development Council. For over three years, until 2001, it shared premises with NuNaHeDuo (Dislocation magazine), OP Club, and OP fotogallery. Ka-sing presented the last exhibition with work by Araki before we closed the gallery door in the latter part of 2001. He told me that Kith Tsang, a Hong Kong established artist had kept the stone, which safe-guarded our door for many years, as a souvenir out of sentimental reason. Did those years really vanish without a sigh?
Single side, 88mm x 50mm, circa 1995.
Single side, 89mm x 54mm, circa 1997.
Who would need an address anymore, thought Ka-sing. He had become a bird in 1997, flying between Hong Kong, Toronto and some other cities.
Years after the flood (from September 1997-)
When we first arrived in Ontario we lived in Markham, a 35 minutes drive from downtown Toronto. I had my first name card printed with the Avery business cards templates. Obviously they were not much of use as it did’t even bother me that I’d forgotten to put the phone number and email address on it. I was still coordinating work of the magazine, the Club and the exhibition. After we moved down to the first floor of Candy Factory Loft on Queen Street West and started our operation there in 2000, we named our Toronto gallery as OP fotogallery for half a year, working in sync with the Hong Kong gallery. But, our conception, and our New York impression of a gallery inside a loft did not work out. First, the loft management did not allow us to put any signboard on the pavement in front of the building, or around, not even a sign on our flat window to indicate that there's a gallery. To buzz entry into the building was also a discouragement to Torontonians, who are always overly discreet and easily intimidated. After six months we changed the gallery name to LEE, Ka-Sing Gallery. We went a step further to display a wood alphabet sculpture L E E (hand-made by Ka-sing) on the ledge of our big window, so that people passed by would see it. It became our standard gallery logo. In the beginning, we had no grand plan to establish a big gallery business in Toronto, we just wanted to create a meeting point, where photographers and photo enthusiasts could meet. Nevertheless we worked hard to produce quality exhibitions, adding bit of zing into the photography gallery scene in Toronto.
Single side, 89mm x 51mm, circa 1997.
A personal name card of Holly, in the first year she moved to Toronto.
Double side, 91mm x 54mm, circa 2000.
This was one from a series of images, that we featured and promoted our artists on the cards. Yao Jui-chung was one of the noted artists we represented. He was in Toronto for few times back in the days, as our invited artists and mounted his solo exhibitions at our gallery.
Single side, 90mm x 50mm, circa 2001.
Lee Ka-sing gallery at the Candy Factory Loft. With main focus on representing noted artists in Asia. In our stable we carried artists such as Nobuyoshi Araki, Yao Jui-chung, Leung Chi-wo, Narahashi Asako and Yau Leung, as well as Canadian artists such as Diana Thorneycroft, P. Elaine Sharpe and Balint Zsako.
Our circumstance changed drastically in 2006. Despite an unpleasant incident, the failing to go to the already paid for Alternative Art Fair in New York, we committed to something even more far-reaching - to move the gallery further west of Queen Street West, to the corner of Peel and Gladstone, to a hundred-year old three-storey building. We cracked our brains to find an appropriate name, a signature for the newly-accquired place, which we felt rectangular, solid and humongous comparing to what we had before. We arrived to the name IndexG, as G stands for Gladstone, Index, a finger pointing to. It proved to be another fogged name, hard to pronounce and hard to remember - that is if you haven’t been told of the logic. In this building we’ve settled down, run two floors of galleries for two years (2006-2008) and galleries on the ground floor for twelve years (2006-2018), a B&B (2008-) until now. We came to know a lot of good artists that are not in the front line or in the main stream, many of whom are just like us, from elsewhere. The diversity and quality of art is simply amazing. Without much acknowledgement and recognition, no publicity and nobody writes about them. These works just exist in their own circles and die, one day. But what does one expect from the dominant age of social dilemma? If you don’t socialize, even serious writers are putting out of place, and out of work. This era has created many channels and opportunities for many people. But it's an ocean with views running amok, the amount of information is suffocating and drowning. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful are all on board.
Single side, 89mm x 50mm, circa 2006.
LEE KA-SING gallery moved to 48, 50 Gladstone Avenue in 2006. The inaugural exhibition "DOUBLE 6 -SIX OCCURRING DIALOGUE" occupied the two floors of the gallery spaces in our newly owned building. Six pairs of artists: Anothermountainman, Bing Lee, Balint Zsako, Henrik Drescher, Millie Chen, Lisa Cheung, P. Elaine Sharpe, Evergon, Diana Thorneycroft, Frank Rodick, Asako Narahashi and Normand Rajotte.
Single side, 89mm x 51mm, 2017
The galleries at 48, 50 Gladstone Avenue was operated for two years. In 2008, the second floor gallery space was transformed into a Bed and Breakfast venture, while the gallery remained on the ground floor street level.
Single side, 89mm x 51mm, 2017.
In 2015, the ground floor gallery was renamed as GALLERY 50, and mainly used as a rental gallery. Occasionally we'd organize our own projects, switching focus to work more on personal work.
The ocean still pounds
We won’t give up. We’ll still contribute, self-publish and help others to. We’ll share art like birds sharing their songs. There’re handfuls of projects awaiting. As we continue to evolve so do our name cards. With every card, it shows the little twists and turns we’d taken, things we’d already done, left behind and forgotten. I really like Ka-sing’s recent name card (also it is his favourite) with the Chinese name, the three characters Lee Ka-sing 李家昇 in calligraphy by Araki 荒木經惟. It reminded me of Tokyo, the bars Araki frequented and his karaokes. Like his calligraphy Araki really loves to sing and dance. I had the chance to join him one evening in a bar and was forced to sing “Yesterday”, a Beatles song. But the name OP belongs also to today, it only changed its definition after we came to Canada, as nobody understands its meaning and significance, it is out of context. That is also why we gave it new clothes, Ocean & Pounds, in return it gives us sound and image. The other day, a man walked by our driveway and he stopped, pointing to the licence plate of our Honda and asked, “I was always curious, what does OP OP stand for?” And I said to him,”Oh it’s just a sound, like a dog’s bark.” Or the ocean roars, I thought and smiled lightly. I wouldn’t want to tell him the long story, I bury them in our heart beats, swimming in ocean and thrashing against edges of concrete piers, as dissolved memories, bit by bit, washing away. (September 15, 2020)
Double side, 90mm x 50mm, circa 2007.
After closure of the gallery projects in Hong Kong, OP focuses on its base in Toronto. We incorporated and adopted the official name - OCEAN & POUNDS, working projects alongside the gallery venture. The gallery eventually ceased operation in 2018, and we now have time to put our energy on the online shop, and to develop a line of fine Print-on-demand publishing.
Double side, 90mm x 50mm, circa 2007.
Single side, 88mm x 50mm, circa 2015-16.
Single side, 89mm x 51mm, 2017 to current
Back to basic. Ka-sing's personal card which has used for few years. His name in Chinese charaters is the calligraphy by his friend, and also an artist he represented in the gallery days, Nobuyoshi Araki.
1. Flip Books as Optical Toys
John Barnes Linnett made the world’s first flip book in 1868, naming his creation Kineograph but the object was later classified under “optical toy”. I do not question him about choosing a windmill and a dancing skeleton for his experiment, but I couldn’t resist the thought that he might have the adventurous Don’s Quixote on mind at the same time of his invention.
Flip books play tricks with our vision, which has a tendency toward persistence. By flipping hundreds of sequential images in rapid succession we are led to the illusion of life and motion. Nobody took the idea of flip books seriously and considered them just “optical toys” - until they saw the birth of the motion pictures twenty years later, when moving images created an urgent sense of wonderment and anxiety, that we could keep time ‘alive’, that what had happened in life could be revisited. Time, already in the past every split second of a thought, was alas proven containable - that certain moments could be saved for the present and future in other forms, just think of the transformation of ice to water.
In the world of static and moving images, after one hundred and fifty two years since the appearance of the first flip book, technological advancement enables the medium a total migration from analog to digital. Theoretically things are made easier for us to use. Take for example my smart phone, burst as many pictures as you like, you won’t miss a single perfect action shot, or an admirable portrait ruined by closed eyes. It’s so convenient, take in everything and decide later! The inconvenient truths are many: we accumulate far too many images, organizing takes time and space (not to mention our devices need constant upgrades) but worst of all, we gradually lose our sense of judgement, and the ability to capturing the perfect moment.
I don’t remember when and why I bought my flip books (one of them is a gift from friend), perhaps they were fun, inexpensive, and most probably, I considered them as ‘optical toys’, and they are still. These flip books do not form a collection either, up to now I have only six. Four of them are horizontal, two are square. When I study them closely, two of the four horizontal books were published by B. Shackman New York in the early 90s - one showing a couple dancing titled Dance Lesson from the good old days, the other, an awkward Charlie Chaplin stumbling upon the woman standing with her back to him while blowing her nose. A series of stupid conflict developed. It really feels like a mini silent movie with the paper flipping sound as the only music accompaniment. On the cover it is written flipix™ a trademark for the movie flip book.
The remaining two horizontals are printed in colour - one from Walt Disney’s, flippable from both sides. One side shows the wise but mischievous Donald Duck shooting with a secret weapon, the other side appears a giant about to slam Mickey Mouse with a big clap. The remaining flip book named Polish Animated Film was produced by Studio Miniature of Warsaw. It presents vivid scenes of a Spanish matador fighting a bull. I think I must have bought this during a trip to Eastern Europe in the early nineties. Coincidentally, these movie flip books were printed in Hong Kong in the 90s, reminding me of a golden era when every business in Hong Kong was booming.
Next, the two slightly larger square format flip books are quite unusual. One depicts ultra-high-speed photographic images by the scientist Harold Edgerton, in which a balloon is punctured by a bullet and bursts into pieces. Birthrite is a more artistic flip book with drawings by Ruth Hayes. Flip through its pages from back to front, the book reveals itself as the story of birth delivering. What’s interesting here is also the hand-written Buddhist Mahayana texts incorporated into each drawing, wilfully dedicated to the newly-born as a little poem, a hymn to life.
In retrospect, no matter how small my collection of flip books is, it has a hidden impact. It has pre-paved a path for me to work on a series of photo flip books many years later.
2. Flip Books as Vengeance
In 2011 I took a sequential series of photographs of Patrick Lee during lunch in a restaurant at Pacific Place, Hong Kong. Back to Toronto I began to work on the small production of flipping those moments, putting together more than a hundred frames into a flip book. The finished object filled me with joy. With my left hand holding the small, fat rectangular booklet, my right thumb flipped the pages rapidly to create a tiny animation. Patrick suddenly became alive, his vivid conversation intercepted with body gestures still remain fresh up to this day. I named the little movie Patrick. In 126 frames. This was the beginning of my flip book project, and from 2011 to 2012, I’d taken on more attempts and experiments on different subjects, firing my Canon in continuous mode to capture short-bursted moments.
Why don’t you just make videos!
It sounds almost religious in this grand digital age to go back to analog, or is the word ‘ridiculous’ more appropriate? At the time I might be out of balance, mentally exhausted with images bombarding from all sides. I refused to be drowned, so much that I wanted revenge, to slow down, I wanted that tactile memory, touch and smell again. From a contradictory point (or a convenient point) I was clever enough to skip hundreds of prints to be made personally in the darkroom, instead I would order prints online fulfilled by general photo centres in the malls. Despite the plan the majority of raw images laid in my hard disk for five years and the project of fifteen flip books did not kickstart until 2017. During that year I printed over two thousand images from photo centres in Walmart and Costco. Ironically, in pursuing this seemingly humble task, a punishing, labour intensive tale ensued. I became one machine and slave to my idyllic ‘noble’ course. The Vengeance to slow down the digital world has its consequence.
To make entirely from hand, even as simple and primitive as a flip book, there are many considerations and some technical requirements. Specifications like size, number of images, thickness, binding etc. To flip with the right thumb or the left thumb, which side first (or flippable both sides for two little movies?) etc. etc. On the whole most problems were solved, with some degree of imperfections. Due to the slightly uneven edges (all photos were trimmed by hand) I could not flip the little book very smoothly without being occasionally caught. Each flip book is “almost unique”. If one flip book is considered one photograph, then, due to the amount of work involved very limited editions can be produced. I have produced two editions for each flip book: one for exhibition and one for myself. In that sense It has almost no market value. The value lies purely in the making, which is also the thinking and learning process of it.
The shape of Time
What are the subject matters in my flip books? What do I shoot? To work on this particular photo project I must answer these questions first. That’s when things become more philosophical and complicated. That fraction of time on my hand could be a portrait, a person reading a poem, clouds roll by, or sitting inside a train running from Tokyo to Yokohama. Time can be stretched, or contracted. From 2000 to 2020, Noah Kalina took selfies of himself every day for twenty years. The resulting 7,263 images are made into a video of eight minutes long. To look at his time-lapse self of twenty years in mere eight minutes! Yet it’s nothing new since the existence of videos. For countless times we have seen videos of flowers blooming from buds - in just a blink of the eye. Scientists spent decades and decades recording retreats of mountain glaciers, to present before our eyes in just under a minute. On the other side of the coin, to be able to see a bullet going through an apple captured by a flash strobe in millionth of a second, raise another serious question on the relationship between image and time - we can never fully understand, or perceive time. The ability to manipulate image and time at this level is like counting the infinite, spotting bright stars in our observable universe, among galaxies which our astronomers estimate more than 200 billion exist. Do we have enough time to know time?
The Flip Book Keyboard
Those flip books, all fifteen of them, were put together in 2018 in the exhibition Both Sides Now. They were displayed on one long ledge projecting from the gallery wall, with partitions for individual book. The idea of the display was using the form of a piano keyboard. There is always the challenge to display these books, they are tiny and delicate, vulnerable to theft, tear and wear. But without the actions of touching and flipping defeat the function and purpose of flip books: as portable little movies, thumb theatres, gadgets free and techno free. Some time ago, it was a little heart-broken for me to learn that some pages from my flip book of reading Ya Si’s poems were torn off at a former exhibition in Hong Kong. But it was a calculated risk, and I am happy still to have my own personal copy, the only intact copy left in the whole wide world. However, with every solution comes another question: given another chance to show, would I be willing to use my only precious copy, expose it to an unknown audience and open up dangers of damage and theft again?
The display of the Flip Book Project at the exhibition Both Sides Now (Gallery 50, Toronto, 2018).
1
Patrick. In 126 Frames
Pacific Place, Hong Kong
#2 of TWO copies
2
Lee Ka-sing. Bellwood Sunset (138 frames)
Trinity Bellwood Park, Toronto
#2 of TWO copies
3
Holly Reading a Poem Written by Leung Ping Kwan (135 frames)
50 Gladstone Avenue, Toronto
#2 of TWO copies
4
Clouds etc. (99 frames)
Gladstone and Peel
#2 of TWO copies
5
Gardiner Expressway (128 frames)
Heading east of Downtown Toronto
#2 of TWO copies
6
Iris in Train (83 frames)
Tokyo
#1 of TWO copies
7
Ipadmaniac (134 frames)
Lau's Kitchen, Hong Kong
#1 of TWO copies
8
Above Clouds (92 frames)
Toronto
#1 of TWO copies
9
Making Tea at McDonald's (118 frames)
Shibuya, Tokyo
#1 of TWO copies
10
Spider in Roppongi (77 frames)
Roppongi, Tokyo
#1 of TWO copies
11
Crossroad Shibuya (82 frames)
Shibuya, Tokyo
#1 of TWO copies
12
At a Photographers' Gathering (112 frames)
Gallery Z, Hong Kong
#1 of TWO copies
13
TV Manga at a Tokyo Hotel (128 frames)
Shibuya, Tokyo
#1 of TWO copies
14
Roof Top Basket Ball (103 frames)
Central, Hong Kong
#1 of TWO copies
15
Hing Kee
Lyndhurst Terrace, Central Hong Kong (292 frames)
#1 of TWO copies
(DISLOCATION, Journey Issue, June 15, 1995. Cover photo by Lau Ching-ping)
In the Journey issue of Dislocation magazine published in 1995, the contributor Kith Tsang wrote in the introductory page:
“The fun of scrapbook is there is no rule. A scrapbook allows a personal space of immediacy, multi-direction and redeployment of materials, through this space I stretch my senses. The scrapbook is one of my daily necessities. A little bit of interesting matter, a bit of thought and some viewpoints are jotted down without any rule to follow”
(Work by Kith Tsang Tak-ping. published in DISLOCATION, Journey issue)
As the other contributor, I presented a letter written to my daughter in 1991, from Dung Huang China:
“Si-Ling, Mom received the fax from you, ah Yee, ah fa and ah yin today. Feeling extremely happy, I write you this letter, in the hope of mailing you too this beautiful lily flower stamp.
With the improvement of transportation, I will be back in Hong Kong in one or two days, while this letter might have taken ten, or even twenty days to arrive.
In our trip, we have Zhen Zhen, a lovely lass of fourteen, who has travelled to many places especially inside China. Given a chance, Mom will definitely bring you. Mom August 20, 1991”.
These days, Si-Ling brings me. After moving and settling our livelihood in Canada, we’re able to enjoy the first “holiday trip”, traveling to Berlin in 2017. Why Berlin? There were many reasons, one of which was, a suddenly urge to gather long-lost memory dusts, those diminishing flavours of the past. I'd tried, but quite unsuccessfully, quickly attracted by and diverted from new layers of vibrant skins, the city I remember, though vaguely, has already changed.
Kith had made this middle-Eastern journey we dared not dream of in the 90s. He was discerning and did document it through sketching, drawing, collaging and pasting his trip in the scrapbook, almost everyday. I regret that I had not asked him about the trip, which must be full of discoveries and thrills, fears inevitably among lots of wonderful encountering. Looking at the few and only pictures from the magazine, I can’t help but want to know, did he travel to Abu Dhabi first, crossed the Red Sea to Egypt, where he saw the pyramids at Giza, then set sail across Mediterranean to Turkey, visiting Cappadocia, Bursa, and finally arriving at Istanbul? While recent memories still felt fresh, I have no trouble recalling our excitement on a trip in 2018. For the first time, Kai, Ka-sing and I were able to visit Istanbul, each carrying his bag of imagination, or expectation to tread this ancient city, the city that sits on two continents, and for two thousand years, served as capital for the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. With Kai, who treats food as seriously as his art, we're able to enjoy the best Turkish food around town.
For me and Ka-sing, life in the nineties was productive, totally engaging and overtly occupied. I was away from Hong Kong a lot of times, writing postcards to Si-Ling wherever and whenever I could. This formed one of the three works I contributed to the Journey issue. My love for cats rooted from childhood - on a certain day, when a cream coat, blue eyes, charcoal ears, paws and tail Siamese cat strayed into our home. He never left. My cousin and I loved to play hide-and-seek with him, and made him walk beside us hundreds of times begging after the food dish we held on hand. Occasionally I saw him performing acrobat walk, from one corner window to another. Only now that I find out Siamese are great jumpers and love heights, and we should have prohibited him from doing that dangerous walk. Yes, he fell one day from his playing spot, from the height of eighteen floors. We cried and cried all night without relief. From then on I am attached to cats, and gave Si-Ling present items made out of cats: the Kitty Cucumber beanbag, cat-shirts, cat stickers, cat books, cat postcards, cat cushions, kitten stationery…I did not have another cat until 2008, a year and half after we moved into a three-storey house.
(Cats Postcards, 1989-1994. A work by Holly Lee published in DISLOCATION, Journey Issue)
In a way, Cat Postcards is a collage of Si-Ling’s drawings and some postcards I sent her from 1989 to 1994. Our paper feline friends had become facilitators through which we expressed our longings to see, hug and touch each other. Another piece of work called Berlin, were fragments from a trip produced during my stay in Berlin in the Winter of 1994. The protagonist of Berlin 1994 was a photograph I took in the same year, of the exhibition Résistance by Christian Boltanski. It was an intervention created for the south facade of the historically-burdened National Socialist building (1937), which is now re-named Haus Der Kunst in Berlin. These eyes I encountered, were members of the Rote Kapelle, 150 men and women who fought against the Nazi Regime, the majority of them arrested, sentenced to death or prison between 1942 and 1943. Superficially, I know Boltanski’s work as altars of mourning, contemplation of lives lived, lost and forgotten. Memorials. The shadow of Holocaust underpins the work throughout his oeuvre but it has reached further than that - with mortality being a case of point. By chance this photograph crossed path in my banal life, with some random notes I, or others dropped down during that frame of time, captured and reassembled to form a new narrative, heavy, light, sad, indifferent all at the same instance.
(Berlin, 1994. A work by Holly Lee published in DISLOCATION, Journey Issue)
(Camden, Maine, 1994. A work by Holly Lee published in DISLOCATION, Journey Issue)
Glad I made these pictures, but.
I begin to wonder, by looking back at these three manipulated, journalistic photographs, was I re-visiting the confusion, and fragmentation of my adult life? Why was I making them at all? Perhaps I wanted to recapitulate my experience in 1994, the year I waved medical treatment good-bye, the year, despite frail health, I took leave to a number of places, Berlin, New York, then Camden in Maine. Along I grew and put alfalfa in my sandwiches, added cheese cake and coffee in my menu, remained cautiously optimistic about a life that might be cut short. Obsessed with looking and photographing debris, in those abandoned, shattered pieces I found solace, ashes and remnants of many less traumatic, but still largely forgotten lives. I remembered Camden in rain, images turned into sound, ripples of rain drops resonated the silent spiral movement of an already rusted spring.
City Cookie (Toronto Chapter at Gallery 44). Promotional material for the vitrine exhibition in 2003.
It was all about the sky above us, the “negative spaces” carved out by buildings of designated cities for Chi Wo and Sara’s specific project - City Cookie. The work subsequently occurred as a series taking place in Hong Kong, New York, Brooklyn, Banff, Shanghai, Venice, Toronto, Sierre, São Paulo and just recently, being remade in Hong Kong at Tai Kwun Contemporary (2018). The project began in 1999, reincarnating itself every time in a new city, responding to situations, animated intermittently with photographs, videos, sculptures, installations, public interventions and performance.
The Toronto sky (2003) Chi Wo included in the project City Cookie, unintentionally, was part of our making. In the first few years at the Candy Factory, our gallery enthusiastically introducing important Asian and Hong Kong contemporary artists to Toronto. We knew Chi Wo way back in the early nineties, when his collaborative work with Sara, his pin-hole images were featured in DISLOCATION Magazine. Looking back, his photographs were always framed unconventionally, with wood or metal (or a fusion of both) framework made by himself presented as an installation, and once, impressively as a sculpture opening up like a flower.
At the vitrines of Gallery 44. Left: City Cookie (Shanghai Sky). Right: City Cookie (Hong Kong Sky).
At the vitrines of Gallery 44. Left: City Cookie (Toronto Sky). Right: Hong Kong Sky and Shanghai Sky.
In the press release for the exhibition City Mapping: Rough Cuts at Lee Ka-sing Gallery in January, 2003, I wrote, “The photographs were shot in New York in 1999 with a pin-hole camera. Leung’s interest doesn’t lie in architecture, only the sky. Shot from various locations in the city with a pin-hole camera, Leung would later cut out the skies from the contours of surrounding buildings and then reassemble them into fan-like 2-D photo sculptures.” City Mapping: Rough Cuts had featured fifteen work from these assemblages, encased under glass in conventional 30.5 x 36 inch black frames. Happened at the same time, we co-organized with Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, to stage a smaller show at the vitrines outside its corridor, displaying three pin-hole photographs from the City Cookie series - one of which had to be made in Toronto.
Cookies prepared for the receptions of both exhibitions: City Mapping: Rough Cuts (LKS Gallery, Toronto) and City Cookie (Toronto Chapter, Gallery 44) in 2003. Cookies courtesy Dessert Trends Bakery.
As I opened up the lid of the red and gold striped tin can bought from Dollar Store, a strange combination of buttery and moldy smell emancipated. I picked up the cookies in individually Ziploc bags as carefully as I could, as if picking up relics from the long past. They were really fragile seventeen years after they had been baked, and a few of them already broken. These cookies were made by Dessert Trends using the aluminum cutters Chi Wo provided. Dessert Trends Bakery opened in 1999 by the Vietnamese Chef Don and quickly became the talk of town about its fine pastries, cakes, truffles, sweet tables and cookies. I read an interview of Chef Don some time ago, before inviting Chi Wo to present his show in Toronto. I approached the Bakery and was lucky to obtain their sponsorship of producing specific sky cookies for our receptions - two hundred cookies for the two exhibitions. For a number of years, I shopped birthday cakes at this Bakery without hesitation. It was sad to learn Don had to close the Bistro-Patisserie outlet for good in 2016.
Upon returning the City Mapping: Rough Cuts photographs to Chi Wo, we decided to collect two works from this series: Park - West 28 II and Warren at Church. Both are unique silver prints collage done in 1999. And indeed the work has inspired me to look at sky differently. I’ve become obsessed with that negative space, that piece of almost unnoticeable, unpronounced shape created by surrounding structures, the absence suddenly made present. I’ve become a sky-eater. Chi Wo once said “I am afraid to lose memory. However, when memory becomes vague, it turns into a vivid imaginative space as I try to remember the forgotten.” It would be amusing to think, resisting to feast on lotus, seeking remedy for receding traces, he has found that vivid imaginative space - impression of a pin-hole frame, the silhouette of buildings, the cut-out sky, the cookie, a buttery bite incorporating all of the above, a munching experience that can actually melt deep into your senses.
Going back to the London postcard - an V&A production, it featured an image from Tim Walker’s Wonderful Things exhibition. Shot against limbo background, an astronaut like three-dimensional transparent helmet capsulized a woman's head. The "mask" was cut vertically into many sections, each printed a woman’s face on transparent organza layers, like multiple frames in a film. It was actually a photograph of the famous model Karen Elson Tim Walker shot for Vogue Italia. The mask was by Dutch designer Iris Van Herpen, called Dazed, the white costume by Louis Vuitton. The whole image was simply captivating. We decided to send it back to Ka-sing, who was at that time in Toronto taking care of the B&B. Iris, in her quick hand swiftly scribbled down Tower Bridge on the back, with super size Suki sitting on the pedestrian walkways between the two towers. It was all about holiday and our hearts were light, lit with “2020 London”. On the limited background she jammed in London Eye and Gherkins. One of the reasons I wanted to mail back this postcard was for the Tate stamp. We were lucky to be back home before the virus outbreak, and the lightness of London has become unbearably heavy after we left.
I am tempted to go on mentioning another postcard Iris sent me from Chicago in 2018. She was on a short trip there with a friend. I asked her to send me a postcard, if she had time. I got her postcard punctually a few days after she came back. On it an oil painting by Doris Lee titled “Thanksgiving” painted around 1935. The painting, done in a naive folksy style, offered a warm scene of women preparing a Thanksgiving feast, which would have had great appeal to the country still steep in Depression. It did win the prestigious Logan Purchase Prize. Yet Josephine Logan, the donor of the prize openly discredited the work. This controversy only made Lee more famous, and the painting became an iconic image of the American holiday. Following a North American tradition we do make dinner a more sumptuous meal for our Thanksgiving day, which is held on the second Monday of October. Did Iris miss the warmth of home cooking when she spotted this postcard? The Thanksgiving painting is in the collection of Art Institute of Chicago, where Iris briefly visited. On the back of the postcard, she scribbled a city view of tall buildings, most notably Willis Tower. It used to be called Sears Tower when Ka-sing and I visited many years ago. Yes, the Windy City still rings a bell. We went up the Tower on a foggy day and couldn’t collect any city view. Here, Suki was also there occupying a space in the sky, sitting on top of a marquee sign “Chicago”, powered all around by warm LEDs. He’s the lucky one. He travels everywhere with Iris, in her sketches, inside her tote bag as a cardboard cat.
At the dawn of launching the DOUBLE DOUBLE: Box-in-a-Valise exhibition, memory of a past experience triggers a lost thought. Years ago we had undergone a simpler, onsite installation similar to this one. We were running Lee Ka-sing Gallery at Candy Factory Loft on Queen Street West, and had a very different role then.
LKS Gallery participated in the inaugural Toronto Alternative Art Fair International (TAAFI 2004-2006) in 2004. It was run in parallel to the Toronto International Art Fair, but staging venues in two small, beautiful and historical hotels - The Drake and The Gladstone. Though both hotels were just a few blocks from our gallery, we opted to present work in the more contemporary and chic Drake Hotel.
Flipping through boxes of dislocated photographs we rediscovered a few images taken from the Drake Hotel. Some memories surfaced, and we could begin to pick up dusts to reassemble the exhibition at Drake Hotel in the Autumn of 2004. For four days, from September 30 to October 4, we had transformed a lofty suite in the hotel to a small photography gallery. Besides bringing a roster of remarkable artists there, we focused on two thematic exhibitions: Body Language, a group show, and Unanswered: witness, a solo by P. Elaine Sharpe.
The room door was opened for guests to walk through a short and narrow corridor into the suite. On the right wall of the corridor, we mounted posters of the two curated shows: one image by Sadegh Tirafkan, and the other by P. Elaine Sharpe. Immediately we entered the light filled, comfortable sitting room, where a couple of sofas and a long desk were in place. Despite the generous natural light coming from the windows, we had to block them to avoid lights reflected from glass of the framed works. The Body Language exhibition was situated here. Besides Sadegh Tirafkan, the other artists were Enrique Mendez De Hoyos, Xing Danwen, Diana Thorneycroft, Almond Chu, Mamoru Horiguchi, Michel Campeau, Simon Glass and Nobuyoshi Araki.
There was only a linen curtain serving as a wall partitioning the sitting room from the bedroom. In the bedroom P. Elaine Sharpe displayed her series of Unanswered: witness (2002). They were large size acrylic dibond prints. Places photographed were twentieth-century crimes scenes, where Elaine 'investigated' and 'dramatized' through the deliberate use of out-of-focus lens, the truth left unanswered. We met P. Elaine Sharpe in the early 2000s, and interested in her conceptual photography approach. This series of work was shown earlier at Le Mois de la Photo in Montréal (2002). Lee Ka-sing had brought Elaine and this body of work to show in Hong Kong just a few months prior to the Fair, in the broiling month of May 2004.
On the bed was some work by Diana Thorneycroft. Her provocative bodywork was quite well-known in Canada and internationally. At that time, she was also developing a series of work on “Doll Mouths”. A box of 8”x10” colour photographs of this series was shown to the public at Drake Hotel.
Taking a step back from the bedroom, on the right was a nude 16”x20” photograph by Almond Chu. Almond is noted for his portraiture and using body forms in his art. Back to the sitting room, where we’d placed different photographers’ work in the Body Language theme, an unfortunate and unforgettable event occurred. Simon Glass, a Toronto photographer, whom we’ve first got acquainted with from Gallery 44, was among the artists of this show. We had brought his series 72 Names of God, a suite of 8”x10” black and white silver prints to the venue. Some of these photographs, along with some from the Doll Mouths series were stolen during the opening night. The organizer could not do much for us and those prints were never recovered.
Sadegh Tirafkan (1965-2013) was an Iranian photographer known in his country and the Western world. He worked from photography to performance to video installation and collage. We knew him shortly after 2000 and had been following his work. After we relocated to 50 Gladstone, we had the chance to organize a solo exhibition (Temptation, 2006), including a video presentation of his work. We did not get much in touch after that, he was pursuing his career full speed, splitting time on projects between Tehran, Toronto, the US and Europe. And in 2013, we heard the sad news that he passed away with a brain tumor. After his death, Tirafkan's artistic heritage is preserved in the archive and museum of the Tirafkan Foundation in Tehran, which contains a huge number of photographs, short films, videos, installations, scenarios and multimedia pieces. In our book shelves, we are still holding a number of his monographs.
It always amazes us to look back, to find so much had happened in the past, but can only be accessed through the present moment, which is in a continual process of passing. DOUBLE DOUBLE: Box-in-a-Valise gathered dusts from our past, which again will accumulate dusts in the future. For the moment we’re disturbing dusts, only to discover more.
Some of the photographs my mother left me are over seventy years old. A visual relic I would go over repeatedly to visit bygone eras, especially the early nineteen-fifties. Running through piles of images, some postcard size, others varying but smaller sizes, I was able to walk into fragments of my mother’s life, to connect it with the times. I came across four studio portraits that raised a new train of thoughts. One is a portrait of her sister, my aunt Manah, two black and white photos were gifts from her friends, and in the last picture my mother posed in Cantonese opera costumes.
It was a time before I was born. It was a time when photography was not at all practiced commonly, and too few could afford a camera, a time when photography was regarded as highly professional, a time when studio portraits flourished and many classical Hollywood style portraits were produced.
With instructions from the photographer to cling a little bit to the right, my aunt’s smile was fresh as early Spring. She wore a cheungsam lined with bold embroidery cotton trims . The portrait was not dated. It was taken probably around late fifties. Nicely presented in a fold card, the studio’s name King’s, adorned with a crown, was embossed on the lower right corner of the photograph.
梁素琴 Leung So Kum, Yuet Kong Studio, signed at the back dated 1951.
The beautiful head shot was a gift from Leung So Kum, who rose to become a famous actress active in the 50s and 60s. My mother pursued Cantonese opera as an amateur in her youth. She probably met Leung in the circle of opera singers. Leung gave her this photograph as a gift. An embossed seal on the bottom right hand corner indicated that it was printed by Yuet Kong, the Moon Palace Studio. Leung signed and dated at the back of the photograph November 22, 1951.
The black and white photograph of another famous actress/opera singer Tam Sin Hung, who dressed in Chinese opera costume and held a big ostrich feather fan behind her, was a gift also to my mother. She signed on the front and dated it September 15, 1956. The word Agfabrovira is still visible on the back of the photo paper, a black and white fibre-base paper popular in the 1950s. She remained in touch until my mother died in 2005. Tam was born in 1931 and is still living graciously up to this day.
My mother learned Cantonese opera in her early years. She was passionately in this one-time popular art form and I can still remember her sing. I also remember we owned a book of lyrics from an opera sung by Fong Yim Fun - the Queen of Cantonese opera. It must have been fascinating for her to be staged as a "fa dan" - a female principal role in the Cantonese opera, an image etched on paper in a glamorous look, along side her friends in the acting circle. She went to a photo studio for this shot, fully made up and costumed, a moon fan in her left hand. This photograph was hand-coloured and might be around the late forties. At the back was a chop of Kwong Kwong Studio, which was located on Nathan Road, Kowloon.
In my imagination, she must have lamented that she had never gone professional. A path that she dreamed was cut short by an early arrange marriage. My lament is that I have never asked her too much about her history. My learning of our family’s history was cut short by her death.
Equally sad is stories of the photo studios around that period in Hong Kong were mostly lost. I seem to hear them crying behind the photographs - remember me!
譚倩紅 Tam Sin Hung, studio unknown, signed 1956.
Mother in opera costume, Kwong Kwong Studio, around late 1940s.
I’ve always wondered why Ka-sing had the name Wingo in his earlier years, that is from the seventies to the eighties. In my imagination, perhaps he likes freedom, he lets his wings go. When I asked him, he said perhaps it was the sound. Indeed he was a poet then.
In the earliest period of our studio, we had created a new identity for promotion, as camera and film, as Wingochrome and Holliblad. We used the image in directories, creating advertisements, promotional posters, company stationery and literature. All went well for some time, until we received a complaint letter from Mr. Kwok, the Operations Manager from Kodak.
We had used Kodachrome from ASA 25 to 64 dated back mid-seventies. Since Kodachrome used the K-14 process and needed to be sent to a certain lab in Australia for processing, we could only use it for non-urgent personal projects. For commercial assignments we would go for Ektachrome, or even Fujichrome, which required only two hours for local lab processing. We haven’t picked up reversal films since moving to Toronto. Years later, in between 2011 to 2013, I worked on a new project - the Shan Hai Jing series, I used Fujichrome Provia 120 roll film instead. Kodak ceased the production of all colour reversal films in 2013, but made a welcome return in 2018 with a new Ektachrome E100.
When I researched for Hasselblad’s history, I was intrigued by the line “Everyone who ever interacted with Erna and Victor Hasselblad was struck by how much the two belonged together”. Is it something reflecting Ka-sing and I? Is this a subconscious decision of branding ourselves as Wingochrome and Holliblad in those youthful days? Our first Hasselblad was a 500C/M, sold to us second-hand by Mr. So of J.H. Traschler. As the amount of fashion work increased, we bought a 500EL/M. While EL stands for electronic, M stands for motor. A new design with an electric motor integrated into the camera body, terribly helpful for shooting fashion which demands for a fast and upbeat tempo. Later, out of necessity, we had yet to buy a SWC/M (Super Wide). It has a 38mm Biogon fixed lens for the medium format. We used it to shoot architecture, interiors, and sometimes pictures during holiday trips.
Looking back, I’m glad that Mr. Kwok has now become part of our history. Hasselblad, on the other hand, had never complained. Erna and Victor would have approved our togetherness, like camera and film. And Wingo, facing his identity crisis again in the late eighties, decided to abandon his long-loved name, and reclaimed his Chinese identity as Lee Ka-sing. And me, remain to be that shrub with little red berries, longing for evergreen. Friends say when the Christmas season approaches, they'll think of me.
(Photo copy of the print ad published in creative service guide book, 1980)
(Photo copy of the letter on file, that we replied to Kodak)
WINGOCHROME & HOLLIBLAD, the studio publication
Published in 1979, for studio promotion purpose. Only two issues were released. Publication format: 17"x22.5" in one single sheet, printed on both side, offset printing process. Print-run: 500 copies each.
WINGOCHROME & HOLLIBLAD, issue number 1, April/ May 1979. (front page) Photograph by Lee Ka-sing
WINGOCHROME & HOLLIBLAD, issue number 1, April/ May 1979. (back page) Photograph by Holly Lee
WINGOCHROME & HOLLIBLAD, issue number 2, September/ October 1979. (front page) Photograph by Lee Ka-sing
WINGOCHROME & HOLLIBLAD, issue number 2, September/ October 1979. (back page) Photograph by Holly Lee
If at the age of butterflies.
Instead we portraited ourselves as two photometers, or two light meters - monotone, a little clumsy, but useful and practical.
The German electrical engineer Paul Gossen added Photometry, a branch of science that deals with measurement of the intensity of light to his company’s research and manufacturing program in 1932. From the late 1970s, under the trademark Gossen ab the company began to produce light measuring devices for photography. In 1977, while still early in our studio practice days, we’d already started using two Gossens, one handheld light meter ‘Lunasix 3’, quickly joined by another flash light meter called ‘Sixtron electronic’. Both meters served our commercial assignments well, and we gladly allowed ourselves to adopt their images. We began to appear as a pair of photometers in our promotional materials.
In a few years time, as jobs became more complicated and light measurement needed to be more precise, we acquired another light meter - the Minolta Spotmeter M, which enables precise 1° spot measurement of ambient light. Later we had to add another meter, Spotmeter F, in order to read flash light. The device was also convenient, by pushing a switch left or right, one could easily select the AMBI or FLASH light mode. In time, when the nature of our consignments had become even more demanding, we needed to upgrade. We had to invest on the top of the line, the Minolta’s Flash Meter IV, which was considered ‘the professional meter’ of the early 1990s. It was this meter that introduced Analyzed Flash Metering, enabling us to read the proportion of exposure, from both strobe light and existing light simultaneously. It was used in our studio until we left Hong Kong in 1997. We have never met Flash Meter VI, it was born in 2003, one of the last flash meters Minolta made. We’d already departed Hong Kong en route to another country, another life. Commercial photography, along with many of its related industries, like scanning, printing and publishing, have gone completely from analog to digital. For serious and creative photography, photometer is still the basic tool to assess the kind of lighting one wants to control, keys on the keyboard for your computer input.
Flowery Tales
We painted the vinyl floor of our first studio, almost forty three years ago - a charcoal black. Deviated from D’Aguilar Street, we were at the smaller strip now known as Lan Kwai Fong, which had become the famous dinning and night-life district since the mid-1980s. On the second floor of No. 14 Lan Kwai Fong, within the size of a little more than 500 square feet, we lived, worked and created our first studio, directly opposite another photo studio - Alfred Ko’s. Ko studied photography in Canada, had just returned to Hong Kong to establish his career. In this pair of photographs of the studio, the brand new Broncolor Hazylight appeared on the right was an expensive strobe light equipment we just bought through an installment plan from Mr. So, the chief sales executive of the distributor J. H. Trachsler.
In 1979 we moved one street up, to Wyndham Street. In its early days, the street was nicknamed “Flower Street”, a location for numerous stalls selling flowers. Later the title was transferred to D’Aguilar Street, where the hub of flower vendors were relocated. On Wyndham Street, we rented this new, spacious third floor at 69, Hoseinee House - a ten-storied commercial building for a very reasonable price under a three-year contract. Property at that time was not that hot. But once the contract came near to expire, our hands really got burnt. Young and thoughtless, we’d ignored to read the terms of renewal, which just past the rent control period for one or two months. We could no longer afford the place, the rent had gone up several times more. We moved to a slightly uphill area at the mid-level district, the Castle Road.
(1979, studio space at Hoseinee House, under renovation before we moved in)
The Two Castles
The first castle was at No. 35, Castle Road, and it was disappointing. We had to move our photo equipment up and down three flight of stairs, and most unfortunately, a flooding occurred shortly after we moved in. The building was residential, and we had to take down one wall in the sitting room to make room for work. Regardless, we’d accomplished many jobs there with big sets. There was a job both of us don’t remember the client, as well as the job nature, but recalled the hardship because it had to be finished in three consecutive days/nights, in three different sessions including shooting and set constructions. When the job was completed, it took some of our equipment, and our team down for the rest of the week. Another job was for Cathay Pacific Airline, which required shooting two business class seats with passengers. Through narrow staircases, we had to haul the seats up to the third floor. It was the most haunting tasks we’d ever performed during our one year lease there. We knew by then it was time to look for another castle.
At No. 3 Castle Road, the first floor which was originally for the purpose as a storage space. It became our next castle. After moving in for a few years, we were lucky to meet an architect Karl Shiu, who just returned from the United States to start an interior design studio in Hong Kong. He would then help us to re-design the photo studio, and in return we offered to photograph his design office. As a result, it was the most beautiful studio space we’d ever used. It was the golden era for commercial photography and we’d done many big jobs in this studio, shooting good budget advertising projects and super stars like Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, and Chow Yun Fat, among others. Pictures are really meant to record, and enhance our memories, without them, we'd have forgotten a lot of things in our lives, for example, this long gone red gold fish, a silk kite I brought from Tianjin. It appeared here in the studio. In the small sitting/waiting area we had installed some racks for postcards that we produced, which became popular among models we hired for shooting assignments. Models, hair stylists, make-up artists came from different parts of the world, especially from Australia, New Zealand, London and the United States. They would buy our postcards to write back to families and friends, but most of the time they would buy them just for collection or keepsakes. But for all that ideal and practical aspect of the venue, the owner had never agreed to sell us that space. We moved out again when we found a lovely ground level place nearby, to own, even though by standard it was a bit small.
(1988, studio at No. 3 Castle Road 衛城道)
Studio/Gallery
It was at the end of the eighties when we moved to the nearby Prince Terrace, to a short but wide, no traffic lane hidden behind busy Caine Road. The Central-Mid-Levels escalator right beside the terrace had just begun to construct. In two years time, we could already escalatored-walk uphill to our studio, or if in a hurry, run down from the moving escalator, reaching Central Market on Queen Road Central, just within a few minutes time.
Though a tiny place of not more than four hundred square feet of shooting area, one couldn’t imagine when we moved in this studio, the first assignment was a campaign for an audio brand. It required a shot with a Baby Grand half submerged inside a water pool. The terrace space outside our studio was perfect, we sometimes played badminton there to release our stress. This was the place where we initiated DISLOCATION Magazine (1992-1999), and later, the OP Club - an organization encouraging the collection of Hong Kong Photography. This was also our last studio in Hong Kong. After we left Hong Kong, we transformed the place into Hong Kong's first photography gallery, and NCP (NUNAHEDUO Centre of Photography). It was managed under a committee with funding from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.
(1998, our previous studio space at No. 5 Prince Terrace 太子臺, transformed into a gallery)
Gallery/Studio
In early 2000, two years after moving to Toronto, we opened our photo galley at Candy Factory Lofts. It was located on the then “wilder” part of Queen Street West. The move surprised a lot of our Hong Kong friends, who had immigrated to Toronto earlier, as most of them preferred to stay out of the downtown core. They were in fact afraid of the area where we chose to base. It was a little run-down, and a little off from the city centre. We found it not so intimidating, as the loft idea was probably a New York reference that we’d like to adopt. With the photo gallery idea we wanted to set up a contact point for meeting friends and artists.
(2001, gallery space at Candy Factory, Queen Street West. Yao Jui Chung 姚瑞中 at his solo exhibition)
(2001, gallery space at Candy Factory, Queen Street West. Nobuyoshi Araki 荒木經惟 solo exhibition)
During the five years in the loft, we worked incessantly, exhibiting and introducing important photographers from Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan. However, the New York reference did not work out well. First, the gallery, tucked on the first floor of the loft was less accessible, and almost invisible to the public, and second we were not allowed to place any gallery sign. By fate, at the end of 2005, when driving around the Dufferin Jog, we spotted a small garage for sale. We sort of dreamed, if by proper reconstruction, it could be turned into a nice, small gallery. We contacted the agent and asked for the price, it was like David versus Goliath. The purchase of the garage was linked to the whole corner building at No. 50, Gladstone Avenue.
Though we had the courage of David, it took all our heart and energy, drained all our remained resources, created insurmountable debts, to beget a rose garden which was still vaguely in sight. 50 Gladstone Avenue, further west of Queen West and at the eastern edge of the Parkdale area, stood Gladstone Hotel and Drake Hotel, both had contributed largely to the making of the boom in the mid 2000s. The area, known as West Queen West, has become the coolest and trendiest neighbourhood. Our building, a hundred-year old three-storey building, needed big fixing. With a little help and some advice from another architect friend Bennett, we settled down with a skinny budget for the renovation. The plan was to expand, using both floors, ground and second, as galleries. We invited Ping-kwan, our poet friend, to the opening of the inaugural exhibition. Bad news was construction delay, the opening had to be postponed for a couple of months. Ping-kwan did come to Toronto en route to another city in Canada, only two months earlier. With his usual sense of humour, Ping-kwan wrote the poem “50 Gladstone Avenue” to celebrate our move. From June 9 to 23, 2006, the inaugural exhibition - DOUBLE SIX was on two floors of gallery space, six pairs of artists were invited: Anothermountainman, Bing Lee, Balint Zsako, Henrik Drescher, Millie Chen, Lisa Cheung, P Elaine Sharpe, Evergon, Diana Thorneycroft, Frank Rodick, Asako Narahashi and Normand Rajotte.
It was a prosperous time for galleries, restaurants, cafes and retail shops. Many tourists, artists came and they couldn't find lodgings for the night. When a visiting artist exhibited at our gallery and couldn't find a place to stay in this area, it triggered a point to our change. We were sparked by the idea of renovating the second floor and using it as a short-term living space. In early 2008 we renovated the second floor and turned it into a bed and breakfast. The b and b venture has been running for over ten years now and a lot of artists, curators, art related folks have stayed in our place.
While the ground floor remained as a gallery, we partitioned and used the rear portion of the main gallery as our studio, showcasing new and early work, as well as archives from the projects we did in Hong Kong dated back to the early eighties. Gradually we picked up the momentum of creating new work.
(2016, studio at 50 Gladstone Avenue 吉石大道五十號)
For us it looks like every ten years there comes a new cycle. In 2019, we made another big move within the building. The gallery on the ground floor was entirely transformed into a living, breathing and working space. We devote more time on photography, writing and more so, in organizing our Archive. In the past decades, immensely and passionately involved in promoting other artists' work we have totally neglected ours. Now the new space is divided into two parts - the left wing is a library and brain-storming haven, the right wing kept as a salon space. This space enables us run small exhibitions of our recent work, archives or collections, as well as small shows from guest/friend artists. We keep the large 6 by 6 feet table in the middle, with the square Hazylight hovers above the top. Perhaps, here is where our story ends, or begins. All along, our beloved Hazylight keeps us company.
(Holly Lee and Lee Ka-sing, March, 2020)
(2020, DOUBLE DOUBLE studio at 50 Gladstone Avenue)
(2020, DOUBLE DOUBLE studio, the salon space, in the middle of installing a new show)
Transformation from gallery into a living and working space. View the archive of over hundred images :
https://leekasing-tt.blogspot.com
20x24 inches, gelatin silver photograph
16x20 inches, gelatin silver photograph
Wild Goose
I have this wild goose kite for almost thirty-three years. In my wane memories, I bought it when I was on a photo shoot in 1987, in Tianjin, China. I bought two different kites, a red gold fish, with big belly and enormous tail, and this pinkish goose with huge wings. The gold fish had gone years ago but the goose stays with us during our many times of transitions. The first time it was put into use was as a prop, held by Sunny Pang, the choreographer in my portrait work “89 • The Golden Lotus • Footsteps of June”. When I started to explore photograms in the early nineties, I used the goose to produce an image, which was employed in the annual cover of Dislocation Magazine volume 3, 1995. Part of the photogram was used again, as cover for my little photo book “Holly Lee Selected Photographs” in 1996.
Wire
When did we produce this abstract photogram, where a number of objects scattered in this vast black space? I can still recognize most of them: a 6000 watt second flash bulb from our powerful studio strobe light unit Broncolor 606, a cosmic ladder mechanical clock we bought from Guggenheim museum New York (which is still hanging and making noise in our home), two pieces of slender porcupine quills forming here an X, a plastic 3-d lensless glasses, a wire mandala and a test strip at the corner, a bunch of tangled wire hidden behind the clock with some running amok. The bunch of wire has had several reincarnations. Though it was used earlier in this photogram, it made its presence most prominently in between 1994-5. Ka-sing used it in an artwork in “The Box Show” in the October issue of Dislocation Magazine. “The Box show” was an original idea from Law Kin Wai, an art critic and curator who initiated and organized an exhibition (with the same name) for the Fringe Club in September of the same year (1994). Dislocation had featured a major part of the artwork, by twenty three artists, each created art out of the cd box. And lastly I used it, combined with an image full of leaves to create a photogram called Tangled. It was used in the cover of Dislocation Magazine in January 1995 issue.
Photo-booth pictures
Anatol Josepho - remember his name. Though the first known photo booths were already been working in Europe between 1889 to 1896, he was the person who built, in 1925, the first curtain-enclosed photo booth in New York City, popularized its use by charging only 25 cents for a strip of eight photos in about eight minutes. By 1927 photo booths had already spread to Canada and Europe. In the early days, the machine had been used by commoners and artists alike, for different purposes. We can fondly recall Andy Warhol, who fell into a three year obsession with the machine, making hundreds of images of himself and many other celebrities of that era.
We don’t know and still cannot find any history of when photo booths were introduced to Asia. But here, in the eastern part of the world when the coin-operated automated machine was imported, we used it basically for passport photos - as an legitimate form of identity. I had paid multiple visits to the photo booths since I was a teenager.
During my experimental period of photography, I laid out some of my photo booth pictures, along with my best friends at that time, my cousin as well, to make a photogram called Twenty Photographs. Based on Twenty Photographs I further developed it into an interactive cd-rom. By clicking on each photograph, viewers were led to a little piece of narrative, or video. This work, along with X-ray Film and Tangled, were exhibited in a group show called Nextstop in 1995, a digital exhibition at the Goethe Institut, as well as “Restricted Exposure” at City Hall, Hong Kong, 1996. The photogram was also applied to the cover of Dislocation Magazine, in the “Identity Issue” of March 1995.
X-Ray Film
This photogram remains very personal. The original image is from my mother’s X-Ray film in 1992 - the true, inner identity of an individual that happened to be my mother. The image was used for the Dislocation Magazine cover “Photo Booth Issue” in February 1995.
10x12 inches, gelatin silver photograph
Dislocation cover, Photo Booth Issue, February 1995. Photogram by Holly Lee
Dislocation cover, January issue 1995. Photogram by Holly Lee