I tend to take a less than positive view of the shallow commercialism and consumerism on display in Hong Kong's urban areas, as well as being unimpressed by the rhetoric of growth offered by the city's ever-expanding forest of high rises. Often my images seek out alternatives to these things by looking to nature or to artistic expressions, or to the traces of more traditional ways of life that have survived. However, I don't feel it is possible to simply avoid the things I don't like, I need to document them too. Furthermore I don't feel that images which simply produce 'alienation effects' in the face of consumer culture and the amnesiac cityscape are always enough. I want the images where possible to provide visual pleasure even if the things they document are not perceived as life-enhancing. This was one of the images I produced in trying to respond to this dilemma. Strategies of blur and cropping, and the use of oblique viewpoints in other works from this period are part of that response.
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