Photographer research: Fan Ho
(Project 02: Sequences and Time)
Content
Fan Ho (Chinese: 何藩; 8 October 1931 – 19 June 2016) was a Chinese photographer, film director, and actor. From 1956, he won over 280 awards from international exhibitions and competitions worldwide for his photography.
Fan Ho was born in Shanghai in 1931 and emigrated with his family to Hong Kong in 1949. At the outbreak of war in 1941, Ho’s parents were stranded in Macau for several years and Ho was left in the care of a family servant. Ho began photographing at a very young age with a Brownie which his father had left at home, and later with a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera his father gave him at the age of 14. Largely self-taught, his photos display a fascination with urban life, explored alleys, slums, markets and streets. He developed his images in the family bathtub and soon had built up a significant body of work, chronicling Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s as it was becoming a major metropolitan centre.
‘’… I’ve always believed that any work of art should stem from genuine feelings and understandings … I didn’t work with any sense of purpose. As an artist, I was only looking to express myself. I did it to share my feelings with the audience. I need to be touched emotionally to come up with meaningful works. When the work resonates with the audience, it’s a satisfaction that money can’t buy. My purpose is simple: I try not to waste my audience’s time.’’
— Ho Fan, 2014
Format: Landscape
Location: Hong Kong Central Market
Time: Daytime (03:45p.m.)
Perspective: Lower angle (probably shot this picture from the staircase downstairs)
This picture was captured in the middle of the going up and down staircases. This angle captured a really strong contrast between the daylight from the right-hand side balcony upstairs and the shadow formed left hand-side from the downstairs. What makes this picture more iconic is the main object from the front ground, which is the colour difference of both person’s clothes, dark and light. Both person’s clothes match the colour difference of the background as well. Since this is a black and white photograph, both main object position is under the sunlight part which created line of highlight around their body.
Mood
This picture was photographed at the market, which was about the daily life of the Hong Kong citizen in the old days. The people of the image were wearing simple traditional clothes without any pattern. As we can tell, back at those days during the 60s, Hong Kong just started developing, everyone’s working hard and living in the moment. In the photograph, the man was working for the market, carrying 2 cages, and the women was holding a child with a bag of food ingredients. They’re looking at each other, seems like they knew each other, maybe they’re husband and wife or just neighbours. During capturing the daily life of Hong Kong people, Fan Ho captured the society role of both man and women in the old days. This is really nostalgia and reminds the audience how much Hong Kong changed compare the present and the 60s.
Back then we did not have any editing technology or tools like Photoshop to edit photographs, I really amazed by the way Fan Ho chose to use the strong contrast of shadow and light to make his photograph iconic to audiences. I respect the time he spent at the same spot to capture the perfect moment and the angles he chose to shoot which gave his photographs good layering. Fan Ho photographs speak to me because of the way he captured the life of the old Hong Kong is vivid even though it’s in black and white. It shows how much he cared and loved this city, Hong Kong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_Ho