If These Walls Could Talk

Photographers Ian Lambot and Greg Girard spent years they reflect on the infamous city and its enduring legacy

- Oliver Giles

“People thought we were mad,” remembers British photographer, architect and publisher Ian Lambot. “No one could quite understand why we were interested in the Kowloon Walled City. It had this reputation as a terrible place where terrible things would happen to you. My Chinese friends would ask me, ‘Why would you spend time there?’”

But Lambot wasn’t deterred and visited the Kowloon Walled City hundreds of times between 1985 and its demolition in 1994. At first, he explored out of personal interest. Then in 1988, he joined forces with Canadian photographer Greg Girard to document this much-maligned corner of Hong Kong, which at the time was the most densely populated place on the planet and was said to be packed with brothels, gambling parlors, and drug dens. “Hardly anyone had been there, seen it or even knew where it was,” says Girard. “I’d heard about the Walled City but in those days, pre-internet, there was no automatic visual reference. So before I stumbled across it one night in 1985 I had no idea what it looked like.”