Below are shots from ‘City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City‘ – a photobook by Greg Girard and Ian Lambot. The Canadian photographers spent 5 years shooting in the Kowloon Walled City before it was demolished in the early nineties…

“33,000 people living in over 300 interconnected high-rise buildings, built without the contributions of a single architect, ungoverned by Hong Kong’s safety and health regulations, covering one square city block in a densely populated neighborhood near the end of the runway at Kai Tak airport. In collaboration with Ian Lambot, I spent five years photographing and becoming familiar with the Walled City, its residents, and how it was organized. So seemingly compromised and anarchic on its surface, it actually worked -and to a large extent, worked well. The Walled City was torn down in 1992 but the photographs, oral histories, maps and essays in our book provide the most thorough record of daily life in a place that was a true Hong Kong original.”

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Below is an old cross-section map (source unknown) – click for higher resolution…

A 4-part 1989 German documentary featuring footage from inside the infamous maze in Kowloon…