Story / Street

China & Hong Kong, 1988

A photographic journey through China and Hong Kong in 1988, seen through my grandfather’s camera: streets, signs, people and fragments of everyday life preserved almost four decades later.

China & Hong Kong, 1988 China & Hong Kong
Street scene in China or Hong Kong during a 1988 family trip, with Chinese shop signs, pedestrians and a small vehicle in a narrow commercial street.
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Street scene in China or Hong Kong during a 1988 family trip, with Chinese shop signs, pedestrians and a small vehicle in a narrow commercial street.
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Street scene in China or Hong Kong during a 1988 family trip, with Chinese shop signs, pedestrians and a small vehicle in a narrow commercial street.
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Street scene in China or Hong Kong during a 1988 family trip, with Chinese shop signs, pedestrians and a small vehicle in a narrow commercial street.
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China & Hong Kong, 1988
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China and Hong Kong, 1988.

These photographs were taken by my grandfather during a family trip through the region. I was part of the journey, but the camera was his.

What remains almost four decades later is not so much a record of landmarks as of atmosphere: streets, shopfronts, signs, traffic, people going about their day, and the incidental details that rarely seem important when a photograph is taken.

There was no attempt to document a disappearing world. These were simply travel photographs. Time did the rest.

This series brings together images from that journey as they survive today, with locations identified where possible and left uncertain where they cannot be established reliably.