Hong Kong on Instagram: @Stfeyes’ Cinematic and Intimate Lens

This is part of an ongoing series profiling Instagrammers who have a unique take on Hong Kong’s urban landscape. Read the other stories here.

A street corner, a neon-soaked junction, a shop owner busy at work. Day and night, Hong Kong is defined by its shifting urban streetscapes and the people who move through them. Layered and multifaceted, like a mosaic, these everyday scenes form part of a larger picture of the city.

Sean Foley, a self-taught photographer originally from Australia, has been capturing these markers of the city he has called home since 2013. He first picked up a camera in 2017 — not with the intention of becoming a photographer, but out of a growing urgency to document the city’s disappearing neon signs. “They were, and still are, such a defining part of Hong Kong’s identity,” he says. “I realised one day that if no one documented them properly, they’d simply vanish.”

What began as a personal project quickly turned into an obsession. As he spent more time on the streets, his focus expanded beyond neon to the city itself — its light, people and atmosphere. Driven by curiosity, Foley wandered for hours, often late into the night, refining his eye through trial and error and a constant push to outdo his previous work.

His work is presented in this year’s Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong as part of the new Photography Feature, Pieces of Hong Kong. Alongside Foley, the feature is a celebration of the city through the work of five other locally based artists: Derry Ainsworth, Jeremy Cheung, Marcel Heijnen, Jay Khan and Carlo Yuen. The exhibition highlights photography’s power not only to document but to interpret and transform, featuring images that capture transient atmospheres, overlooked details and deeply personal perspectives.

Each photograph offers a unique way to appreciate Hong Kong, whether through intimacy, observation or reinterpretation. Together, they build a composite portrait of the city’s layered identity and invite audiences to see photography as collectible art — a way to pause, look again and take home a lasting reminder of Hong Kong’s beauty.

Hong Kong as muse

With a passion for futuristic films and literature, Foley’s early work leaned into a distinctly cinematic feel — saturated colours, heavy neon glow and a cyberpunk, dystopian edge (think films like Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell). Over time, however, his focus shifted from visual effect to atmospheric storytelling. While that cinematic quality remains, he now pays closer attention to composition, layering, human presence and subtle emotion. “I want the frame to feel immersive — like a still from a film where something just happened or is about to happen,” he says.

Hong Kong has become central to that evolution. While neon first drew him in as a fading symbol of the city, he became increasingly captivated by its many layers: dense architecture, narrow alleyways and rain‑slicked pavements. Compared to other metropolises such as Tokyo and Seoul that he has also photographed, Foley says Hong Kong feels rawer and denser, its streets tighter and its buildings stacked on top of each other. There is a gritty, layered quality here that he does not feel elsewhere, and it is that grit he finds himself drawn to.

“It’s fast, compressed, chaotic — yet there are these quiet, almost lonely moments inside that chaos,” he says. “I often look for a single person in a busy environment. That contrast feels very ‘Hong Kong’ to me.”

For this year’s Affordable Art Fair, Foley will showcase works that reflect his relationship with the city: rain-soaked streets; lone figures near the rainy neon glow of Yau Ma Tei’s Koon Nam Wah Bridal (冠南華婚紗) and Prince Edward’s Prince Yung Kee (容記小菜王); a taxi cuts through the intersection between Saigon Street and a lantern-adorned Temple Street; and moments of stillness where passersby cross the street near Smiling Plaza (天悅廣場) in Sham Shui Po. 

Rather than focusing on aesthetics, the selection traces a period of transition in both his practice and the city itself. “They represent a period of change — both for the city and for me personally as a photographer,” he says. Some of the works highlight the remaining neon signs; others show more subtle daytime scenes — pockets of light, shadows on buildings and morning street life. Together, they point to an evolution beyond the night scenes he is known for, toward a quieter, more nuanced visual language.

Capturing a city in flux 

Through his work, Foley hopes to encourage people to slow down. “Hong Kong is often seen as fast, restless and overwhelming,” he says. Yet he points to the quiet beauty hidden in its overlooked corners — in reflections on wet pavements, in a lone figure beneath a glowing sign, in morning light catching an old building. “So if someone walks away from my work and begins to see their city differently, that’s enough.”

Lately, he has been thinking more about transition: not just the disappearance of neon, but how cities evolve, what gets lost in the process and how to draw attention to the things we take for granted until they are gone. 

Moving forward, he hopes to publish a body of work that captures this chapter of Hong Kong before it shifts again. “Because if the last decade has taught me anything,” he says and pauses before continuing, “it’s that cities don’t wait.”

Affordable Art Fair runs from 14 to 17 May at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, 1 Expo Drive, Wan Chai. Click here for more information.