The mysterious and experimental black and white photography of 83-year-old photographer Fan Ho gives us a unique chance to see the long-lost cityscapes of Hong Kong in the 1950s, putting its vast cultural, social and economic changes into perspective. Ho, who has won more than and 280 international awards, has published a memoir called “Fan Ho: A Hong Kong Memoir” featuring his gritty and historical Hong-Kong street photography from the 1950s and onwards.

Ho took up photography in the 1950s. He arrived in Hong Kong from Shanghai in 1949 and was fascinated by his new home city, with its shabby houses and dark dirty alleys.

In the 1950s, Ho was just a teenager, and photographing strangers in the streets was more challenging than it might be today – many superstitious people believed that Ho’s Rolleiflex camera would take their spirits away. “With a knife in his hand, a pig butcher said he would chop me. He wanted his spirit back,” Ho recounted to South China Morning Post.

More info: modernbook.com | Facebook (h/t: petapixel, scmp)