Word: yau
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...Autumn of 1997, Yau Leung was just starting to earn a minor artistic reputation when he slipped off a ladder in his studio, hit his head, and died. That the light should have left the eyes of Hong Kong's greatest photographer in so banal a manner makes contemplation of his passing especially difficult. If photographers are not felled covering disgraceful coups or scrappy jungle wars, posterity likes them to advance to gurgling senility, feted by models, retrospectives and hand-numbered editions. There is no romance in death by lapse of concentration - especially not in a man whose defining artistic...
...Hardly any of Yau's works are on public display in Hong Kong (although a few pieces were recently hanging in the Heritage Museum as part of a temporary exhibition on the history of cameras). He did not leave a family. His books are out of print or hard to find, and his prints are not available for purchase from any local galleries (however they can be bought from a small one in Toronto, established by the Hong Kong photographer Lee Ka-sing). Outside a tiny circle of dilettantes, nobody knows his name. Thus, 10 years after his death...
...unlikely, of course, that Yau would have conceived of his corpus in such solemn terms. Indeed, he once said that his interest in photography stemmed from the prize money that could be won in local competitions. A modest and laconic man, he played merely supporting roles for most of his career. As a stills photographer for movie companies in the 1960s, he was one of thousands of anonymous technicians in the service of a burgeoning entertainment industry. As the publisher and editor of Photo Tech magazine in the 1970s, and of Photo Art magazine from 1980, his days were spent...
...lucky he was able to keep so many of his pictures," says Ng Siu-yee with a sad smile. A longtime friend and colleague of Yau's, and today the administrator of his copyright, Ng jokes that had Yau been married, "I'm sure his wife would have made him throw most of his photos out. He was a real hoarder, not just of photos but of everything - newspaper clippings, tram tickets - and you know how small Hong Kong apartments...
...Yau released a small selection of photographs in 1992, in the now unobtainable Lo Fung Stories ("Lo Fung" is the archaic literary name for Hong Kong). It was a masterpiece of editing, and a stunning publishing debut: here was a major photographic talent, arriving on the bookshelf or coffee table in a fully formed state and with images that practically hummed with love for the city and its proletariat. "I was born here, I have always lived here and all my work is here," Yau said in the foreword. In his sense of place, he was to Hong Kong what...