Urban Landscape: Fan Ho Research

After researching about Michael Wolf, I will now research about Fan Ho and how he takes urban photography. I will use the knowledge I gained from this research for my photography portfolio project on urban landscape in Leicester as this will give me a better understanding of urban photography aims and qualities in particular.

Fan Ho (born October 8, 1931 and died on June 19, 2016) was a Chinese photographer known for his photographs of urban life in Hong Kong. He was born in Shanghai before emigrating to Hong Kong, in which he started photography at the age of 14 with his Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera.

According to an article in the South China Morning Post, "The streets, filled with vendors, coolies and rickshaw drivers, fascinated Ho, who arrived from Shanghai in 1949. Taking pictures in a studio was the norm then, but the teenager was more interested in random, candid shots of strangers." (Nip, 2014)

Along with this, an article by Public Delivery stated that Fan Ho was self-taught, and that his images "present a fascination with urban life, slums, dark alleys, streets, and markets, as well as street vendors and kids who were a few years his junior. As a result, Ho built a massive body of work documenting the city of Hong Kong before it became a global financial center we know today." (

In this post, I will be looking at one of his photos, "Quarter to Four."

Source: Zolima CityMag

In accordance to its title, "Quarter to Four" may be taken at around evening time in what looks like a public building. It was taken during the 1950s and 1960s

I feel that this photograph is unique because it shows Hong Kong to feel alive by showing Hongkongers, especially how the main subjects in the photo are the working man carrying two baskets, while on the other side is a woman holding her child and some newspapers. Along with that, we can see other people in the background minding their own business, especially the janitor. As such, Fan Ho expressed how Hong Kong feels alive by showing that the people are vibrant in doing different things and having different problems. 

Furthermore, I liked how Fan Ho puts emphasis on the mother, child, and the man through his use of rule of thirds and the light shining through the staircase wall, being a spotlight for the three characters as if they were in a stage. The shadows helped create this spotlight effect by isolating the subjects around them from the light. He used leading lines from the staircase as well to separate the man from the woman and child. There may also be a story of how the man and the woman are interested in each other as they were looking at each other in the photo.

That said, from this photo, I learned a lot about portraying urban life, using shadows and light, using leading lines, and using composition to help tell the story and gain the audience's attention. I also gained better understanding of photography's importance, mainly to capture precious time, such as in his works which portrayed life in the past. Although my theme of isolation means that my photographs will lack any humans in it, the technical knowledge of leading lines and composition will certainly help with my work.

Source:

• Fan ho's Street Photography: How Hong Kong looked like 60 years ago (no date) Public Delivery. Available at: https://publicdelivery.org/fan-ho-a-hong-kong-memoir/ (Accessed: January 27, 2023).

• Mirandilla, L. (2019) Fan ho's last photography book digs into vintage hong kong life, Zolima City Magazine. Available at: https://zolimacitymag.com/fan-hos-last-photography-book-digs-into-vintage-hong-kong-life/ (Accessed: January 27, 2023).

• Nip, A. (2014) Street life: Hong Kong in the 1950s as seen through a teenage photographer's lens, South China Morning Post. Available at: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1570201/photographer-ho-fans-pictures-old-hong-kong-go-display-new-hotel (Accessed: January 27, 2023).