Hong Kong: City of Colour

Abstract

Previous collections of photographs illustrating the lost world of Old Hong Kong have tended to focus exclusively on black-and-white images from before the Second World War. In this new collection of photographs from the period 1948-1969, Otto Lam has instead selected a dazzling array of images in glorious full colour, including some of the earliest surviving colour views of the city and its environs. In his introductory essay to the volume, Peter Cunich places these photographic images within the longer-term context of Hong Kong's graphic representation from the middle of the nineteenth century, and discusses the significance of the images and what they tell us about Hong Kong from the late-1940s to the late 1960s.