LEONG KA TAI
The best decision I have made in my life was to quit my job as an engineer in England and go to Paris to learn photography, even though I spoke hardly a word of French and knew nobody there. But I managed to learn enough of the language to get by and find a photographer who hired me as assistant. It gave me an opportunity to observe and study the technical side of photography, as well develop the creative side on my own. After three years I returned to Hong Kong and started my own studio.The second best decision was when, after six years, I found commercial studio work too restrictive. I stopped the studio and turned to traveling. At the time, the Chinese mainland was opening up. Having been brought up studying both Chinese and English culture, I felt a special affinity to the people and culture in the mainland, and started to explore the differences and similarities between what I have learned and what I observed. An invitation from Singapore in 1984, to participate in a photo-book project celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Republic, gave me the opportunity to meet and present my work to top professionals all over the world. After a while, magazine assignments started coming in. I have worked on stories for magazines such as National Geographic and the New York Times in the US, GEOand Stern in Germeny. They gave me more opportunities and incentives to observe and explore.
After a few years, I decided to look for an alternative to mere documentary story-telling, which dictated that each photograph be meaningful and pictorially interesting. I started to experiment with movement and blurriness using a cheap plastic panoramic camera. This resulted in a series which I call “Moving Horizon”. This was a departure into abstraction. A liberating experiment.
Also, I realised that I have been ignoring Hong Kong for too long. But instead of photographing the sights that everybody knows about, I concentrated on people and places that have escaped the attention of the population. This culminated in two projects: “City Heroes”, highlighting the achievements of ordinary people – those who worked hard to perform special deeds, who helped the less fortunate without asking for rewards, and those who overcome adversity. The other project is “Hong Kong From The Back”, which shows places in the city tucked into back lanes and out of the way corners, that faced demolition and redevelopment.
My most recent project goes into the realm of multi-media. “Over The Ocean, On The Road” is an exploration in random and slow communication, an antithesis to the instantaneous, but so often tenuous and ephemeral, connections in this digital age, and the experience of traveling slowly, without a fixed schedule. It consists of videos, time-lapse and photographs.
I am now settled in Singapore. Having grown up in a city where English and Chinese cultures co-exist, exploring the co-existence of cultures and races in this island state is a familiar, but still fascinating, experience
. Many years have passed since I took up the camera. It has opened my eyes and honed my vision. It has opened many doors for me. With it, I have experienced places and people I would never have been able to see and meet. I consider myself extremely fortunate to be a photographer.
I am looking forward to whatever the future brings.