Self-Portrait is an all-time interesting way of expression. It is a medium to reflect human relationship and the way how one sees and is seen. It reflects the traces of living, cultural value, personal judgment and identity issue of a certain period of time. The overwhelming selfies seem to suggest that we cannot live without cameras or smartphones. When selfies have become an essential part of most HongKongeses’ everyday life, we want to ask, “What do we perceive through an earnest self-portrait?”

Before we press the button for a selfie, what do we expect to see in the image? What do we want people to see in this image? In this project, we collected 100 HongKongese self-portraits and through the collection, we will know not only how one perceives him/herself but also how our society and our world are perceived.

The curator is visual artist Rachel Ip, who collaborates with a small local publisher “brownie publishing ltd.” in producing this project. It was an open recruitment of self-portraits through social media in 2014. Participants were asked to submit the self-portrait that best represents themselves. Participants come from all walks of life, including the general public, local artists and professional photographers who will be exchanging their life experiences through this interesting platform. This project will allow us to take a macro view of our generation.

Submissions were surprisingly overwhelming, 100 Self-Portraits will be selected and compiled into a photo book and presented in an open exhibition.

"100 Self-Portraits of Hongkongese" is a non-profit making project. The production team works for free. All net profit from the sales of the photo books and crowdfunding (ie. total receipts less the necessary costs) will be donated to "Kong Yeah", a non-profit group, to support local farms and local food production. (https://www.facebook.com/kongyeahkongyeah)

100 Self-Portraits of Hongkongese Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/browniepltd

Purpose of “100 Self-Portraits of Hongkongese” campaign

Cultural influence:

To encourage public to re-evaluate the meaning of self-portraits and their valuation system reflected through self-portraits.

To showcase thoughts and personalities of contemporary HongKongeses in this particular period of time through 100 pieces of HongKongese’s self-portraits.

Art Education:

To help public to develop further understanding and encourage critical thinking about photography.

To promote the experimentation of the diversity and the various possibilities of photography as an art form and a medium of making art.

A project starts on a whim

【100 Self-Portraits of Hongkongese】The self-portrait collection initiative started on a whim after an inspiring dialogue between Rachel and her students at her photography class.

“In Hong Kong, the pursuit of an aesthetically pleasing image remains to be mere avocation when people are taking pictures, and visual art in Hong Kong lags far behind than other countries in Europe, Japan and Korea.”

“The selfie-obsessed culture makes photography an instant gratification, without considering the content of a photograph.”

“To raise people’s awareness in reexamining art of photography, how about we ask people to take self-portraits?”

In a snap of fingers, the project started to grow with passion among them.

Members of the production team contribute to this project with their own career expertise - from marketing, exhibition organization, design to publishing, the team works tirelessly and selflessly for the project. They have tided over all kinds of difficulties throughout the process, and strived towards their goal of making a unique photography exhibition representing the people in Hong Kong.

The submission of self-portraits reflected participants’ great enthusiasm. 160 pieces of self-portraits have been received with many exciting works at last. It is with great pleasure to see participants putting their hearts and thoughts in their own self-portraits, critically exploring one’s self-identity. At the same time, we are also delighted and grateful to see many unsung talents in Hong Kong.

The visual culture realization stage - photobook publishing and exhibition

Our campaign of collecting and showcasing 100 HongKongese self-portraits have moved on to the next stage, the realization stage – the publishing of photobook and exhibiting the 100 self-portraits selected from the numerous submissions by our professional judges.

We really hope to be able to publish the photobook in the best possible way in terms of aesthetic sense and printing quality in order to better record the visual culture of our time and to honor the enthusiasm and collaborative efforts of the participants towards our campaign. Through crowdfunding and pre-ordering books, we hope to engage more people in achieving this goal - to construct, realize and complete our part of visual records and interpretations of Hong Kong in 2014. These crowdfunding supports would help to counter balance the related immense publication budget compare to our groups’ very limited capital and manpower.

List of participating artists, photographers and celebrities (in alphabetical order)

Tentative photo book printing plan (To be confirmed)

Trimmed Size: 180mm(W) X 240mm(H)

Binding: Hard back case binding

Color: 4C+4C

Quantity: 1,000 pcs.

Funding Goals

Our target starts at HK$20,000 for the basic need of “100 Self-portraits of HongKongese” photobook publishing. This amount would only be one-third of the publishing cost. The team has already decided to cover the cost of book design, type-setting and editing on their own resources. But still, the cost for translation and printing will amount to over HK$70,000. Therefore we need your support!

The more you support, the more you engage, the better record of visual culture of our time can be made. Your support would also allow us to have more resources in realizing the other inspiring element of our campaign – the Exhibition. Thus, your support and engagement would mean huge to the culture.

HK$20,000 – the starting point:

This amount will cover 30% of the printing and production cost, the remaining cost will be covered by our group members’ very limited budget and hopefully other funding sources that we are constantly looking for.

HK$50,000 – the betterment:

This amount will cover 70% of the printing and production cost and allows us to enhance this collective visual record in a better printing quality.

HK$90,000 - the community engagement:

With this immense support to our campaign, we would not only be able to share more of these resources to the realization of the inspiring exhibition, together with our backers, we can create further cultural engagement to our society through co-hosting a vegetarian dinner using local farm produce for 10 of our backers* with the local group "港嘢Kong Yeah" (literally mean "Hong Kong stuff") to share and extend our joy of finding support.

* The 10 backers for the dinner would be selected by random draw from the whole list of backers (backings HKD100 or above).

"Kong Yeah" is a local non-profit making group devoted in promoting sustainable living through collaborating with local small independent farms and local industries by hosting educational dinner and various kinds of workshops.

We would donate the remaining amount to Kong Yeah from this immense support after deducting the production cost of both the photobook and the exhibition.

Campaign schedule and progress

Project team profile