2004 International Photography Salon Style

The fishing boats in Aberdeen are getting closer to the shore, the tinkling cars in the Western District are moving slowly along the track, the national flag is flying over the streets, the traffic lights on the roads in Wan Chai are full of human flesh, women are chatting in the central market, couples are whispering in the stairwell, and street children are frolicking on the stone stairs. ...

Under the lens of Ho Fan, it is not difficult to recognize the Hong Kong symbols of those years.

He walked the streets with his camera and kept recording life in Hong Kong. He said, "In my memory, I have always had a deep nostalgia for Hong Kong."

Although the photography salon at that time was not interested in this realistic street photography, it didn't stop his hot pillow from integrating this feeling into his works, turning the texture, blood and characters of Hong Kong into paintings.

I loved literature since I was a child, but I fell in love with photography by mistake.

Although Ho Fan is a master, I think he has a "fireworks smell" between aura and vulgarity. He said, "I'm glad people call me Fan Tsai, because I'm very kind."

When he was a child, he wanted to be a writer. He never intended to be a photographer. When he was a primary school student in Shanghai, he started pressing the shutter on the Bund with his father's Kodak Brownie camera. One of the photos was posted in the classroom, and he won the first art award in his life.

He will also laugh at himself as a layman: "I really can't stand such vanity temptation." He always introduces himself unabashedly, which makes people feel interesting and true.

1946 studied in Guangzhou Peizheng Middle School before coming to live in Hong Kong. When he was in the Chinese University of Hong Kong, he read the literary works written by Ba Jin and Guo Moruo, and even met his tutor in the writing class, praising his writing potential.

"I started to get carried away, so I continued to write," he said. Who knows, but because of this, I am overworked and have a headache. Even reading newspapers hurts, and seeing a doctor can't cure it. Fearing that he had nothing to do, his father gave him a Rolleiflex f3.5 dual-lens camera, which he has been shooting in Hong Kong all his life.

When we know him because of photography, but he takes pictures not because he likes it, but because he can't express his thoughts with a pen, he uses cameras and lenses to express himself.

Being an actor? Being a director? After a long time, his favorite is photography.

Ho Fan, who didn't realize his dream as a writer, brought the poetry of China literature into photography.

Match the vastness of the sea with the smallness of the sailboat, or concentrate a few sailors in the lower left corner to find the lines of the tram tracks and telephone poles and the geometric figures of the window frames. The vastness of nature and the smallness of characters are presented, and the size contrast and composition are like western paintings.

He likes to give priority to black and white tones, because black and white can abstract a colorful world and make the picture more remote and mysterious. Ho Fan won nearly 300 international photography awards before he was 30 years old because of his unique Hong Kong style of combining Chinese and Western styles.

After his achievements in photography, he devoted himself to the film industry when he was young, and signed a contract with the famous Shaw as a handsome young man.

Later, he became a director and directed nearly 30 films. He is the pioneer of "experimental film". His "Divorce" won the best film at the British Pemberley International Film Festival.

When it comes to movies and photography, he has his own attitude. He thinks that he has been a movie fan since he was a child, and that the expressive force of movies far exceeds photography.

The length of the lens, the arrangement of the sequence and the organization of the montage are all profound knowledge. And photography can only be a single picture, with timeliness. Therefore, his films are just the opposite of black-and-white photography style, rich in color and unconventional.

He said that photography is a popular art and has recorded two generations of Hong Kong people.

He captured various market segments in Hong Kong with his lens. In the fifties and sixties of last century, people outside Jiulongzhai were collecting firewood for cooking, street vendors were selling tofu, father and son were eating in street food stalls, and friends in suits and ties were eating snacks in tea restaurants ... Every photo vividly presented Hong Kong's past life to your eyes.

▲ Dingding car is one of the symbols of Hongkong, with a history of 1 13 years. Under the lens of Ho Fan, the conductor is working in the third-class carriage of Tintin carriage; Outside the first-class car, everyone hurried to catch up with the car.

▲ The former Central Market was the last Bauhaus building in Hong Kong, and the laughter disappeared with the times. The central market at the beginning of the escalator was originally called "Guangzhou Market". After several renovations, it gradually became obsolete and was almost demolished by auction. Fortunately, it was transformed into an "oasis in the city" and a gallery was added to the upper floor of the market.

I once took a tinkling car through Kennedy Town in the West Ring Road, but I still clearly saw the big and small green islands before reclamation. These two small islands, which are nearly 500 meters away from Hong Kong Island, have a long history, but few people are there.

Hollywood road is the earliest street in Hongkong. The stone steps photographed by Ho Fan and the stone foundation of the State Telegraph Bureau are still there, but the mailbox has been replaced by a mailbox.

The shops on both sides of the west port city pier have been upgraded long ago, but fortunately, you can still enjoy the street view by tinkling car.

Old hand-painted movie posters explain the heyday of Hong Kong's film industry. Xie Xian's name is printed on the poster of Rouge Tiger, as well as Shi Jian, the villain in Cantonese movies, and Kwan Tak-hing, who became famous as Huang Feihong.

Ho Fan's photography is the first generation of local art in Hong Kong. He filmed the story of hard struggle in those years, and witnessed that Hong Kong changed from a small fishing port to an international metropolis because of the efforts of a group of Hong Kong people quietly going upstream.

His last wish was to return to Hong Kong, and now his wish has finally returned to the root.

Ho Fan moved to the United States after retirement, but he still found old photos from time to time as a souvenir. Starting from 20 15, he painstakingly selected 500 photos full of stories, renamed them, and thought of the English title "Portrait of Hong Kong". However, in 20 16, he was suddenly hospitalized with pneumonia. What is more regrettable is that the cover was not confirmed at last, so he passed away.

Speaking of Ho Fan himself, in the eyes of his family, he is a romantic and silent person. In his daughter's mind, he is a kind-hearted father. She said that her father was afraid to take a long-distance plane and rarely went back to Hong Kong, but he always thought of Hong Kong and regarded it as his forever home. Even the publication of photo albums insisted on looking for Hong Kong Publishing House.

This year, in order to fulfill her father's last wish, she returned to Hong Kong and held the exhibition "Ho Fan: Telling Hong Kong's Light and Shadow through the Lens" with Sarah at Sotheby's Art Space in Hong Kong. In the exhibition, 32 original hand-washed photos of Ho Fan, his Rolleiflex f3.5 dual-lens camera, movie posters directed by him and the anthology "Street Photography Series" are displayed.

And from 500 unpublished photos, 153 photos were selected and made into an album of "Remembering the Elderly in Hong Kong" for sale. The album also invited the great director Wu Yusen to make a preface: "People take pictures without taking away a cloud, but leave gorgeous silhouettes smartly ... From his works, we can once again see the warmth, kindness, beauty and simplicity among human beings."

Among them, Ho Fan's favorite work Twilight is also included. Ho Fan said that in the past 60 years, he took thousands of photos, but he couldn't find the photos like this beloved. If one of his photos can be passed down to future generations, people will miss it. He hopes it is this one, the only one who can connect with him, have his feelings, have such strength, soul and artistic conception.

Although the exhibition is over, you can still see Ho Fan's photographs in the latest collection "Remembering the Past of Hong Kong People". More than 65,438+050 pictures in this album are released for the first time, and each one shows Ho Fan's perfect control of light and shadow, which is his last masterpiece left to Hong Kong people.

Photo album: miss the past of Hong Kong people

English: Portrait of Hong Kong

Publication date: 20 17/06/ 13

Publisher: Everyone in Hong Kong.

Language: English-Chinese (Traditional)