Photography: Francis Wu’s Hong Kong in Black and White

Description

Hourglass & Silhouettes: Lens on a Changing City, presented by Tai Yip Cultural Group, transports viewers to a Hong Kong that lives on in grayscale memory. Through late prominent photographer Francis Wu’s (1911-1989) striking black-and-white images from the 1930s to the 1960s, the exhibition traces the city’s postwar transformation — from colonial port to modern metropolis — capturing fleeting moments of ordinary lives in extraordinary times. From rickshaw pullers and dockside labourers to quiet harbour vistas, his photography transforms everyday scenes into meditations on resilience, movement and cultural evolution. 

Wu was among Hong Kong’s leading photographers, drawing on classical Chinese painting and literature to shape his lighting and composition. Documenting both urban life and rural traditions disappearing under the tide of modernisation, Wu’s work was internationally acclaimed, earning recognition from the Photographic Society of America and a 1957 solo exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of Art. His legacy endures through museum collections like M+ and his family’s archival efforts to preserve a visual history of a city in transition.