Shutter Island

The son of legendary Hong Kong photographer James Chung Manlurk reprints his father’s rare photos to give a glimpse into the city’s past

- Zabrina Lo

The photograph is faded but the expression on the young man’s face is clear. He stands in the Macau sunshine, hand in pocket, smiling with pride and a camera around his neck: a 3.5F Rolleicord, a highly sought-after instrument in 1962, when this picture was taken. James Chung Man-lurk, here making a concerted effort to pose like his namesake, Hollywood star James Dean, would himself go on to find fame as one of Hong Kong’s most respected photographers. He died in 2018, but his work is being kept in the public eye with two forthcoming exhibitions: one beginning this autumn at gallery F22 Foto Space and the other next January in F11 Foto Museum, featuring prints reproduced by his son Stanley Chung Charn-kong.

A career in photography was far beyond Chung’s imagination as a child born in 1925 in a small farming village in Guangdong province. He dropped out of secondary school to work as a farmer and carpenter while living with his grandmother. In 1947, amid the backdrop of the Chinese Civil War, Chung, then 22, joined swathes of other mainland Chinese who took boats across the Pearl River Estuary in search of better job opportunities in Hong Kong.

He arrived here hoping to find an apprenticeship in any industry that would allow him to make a living, and ended up using his savings to learn art from Chan Hak-shun, the senior apprentice of Xu Beihong, the Chinese ink painter famed for his paintings of horses that combined Chinese brush techniques with western composition. He also started an apprenticeship in the visual arts department of Wan Chai’s Oriental Cinema at a time when movie posters and other advertisements were illustrated by hand.