Photographer and author Edward Stokes smashes a stereotype to smithereens. His colorful, hard-cover book, Hong Kong Nature Landscapes (2010, Photographic Heritage Foundation with Hong Kong University Press, 154 pages), shatters the global conception that Hong Kong has a towering urban skyline and nothing else.
This collection of 90 impressive photos and descriptive essays highlights hills, trees, streams, dirt trails, rocks, clouds and sea with hardly a building in sight. “Many of Hong Kong's summits rise to over 500 metres, and the two highest reach over 900. Excluding some small upland plateaus, the mountains drop steeply to confined valleys. Countless hillside streams plunge through deep ravines and gullies.”
There's vastly more to Hong Kong's 1,000 square kilometres than the world knows, especially in the New Territories and on outlying islands. Stokes has “special memories” of five years when he lived on Lamma Island, site of many of the photos. “…how lovely are the Hong Kong islands, and Lamma especially, its coastline sinuous and indented, its spine steep and rugged.”
Stokes makes sure of the book's quality by handling both the words and images. Inspired by natural beauty, he writes in a style that sometimes resembles adventure stories. “Dawn light spreads across an inshore channel to reveal a line of container ships approaching. From my vantage point high on Lamma Island, the inbound vessels seem toy-like, making their way along the East Lamma Channel below Hong Kong Island's peaks. Close by, the strengthening light adds colour to the summer grasses. A cloud towering above Mount Stenhouse reflects the sun's daybreak glow.”
For each photo, Stokes explains what, where and other pertinent details, even providing a special section, “Photographic Notes and Captions”. He has no desire to leave readers wondering about anything. “…contrary to what some readers may think, none of the photographs are aerial shots. All were taken from the ground, with some taken from the summits of high, sharp peaks – thus suggesting an ‘aerial’ perspective.”
There's something seductive about the surprising natural splendor, as if Stokes takes each reader by a hand and whispers, “Come along. Want to see something nice?”
He loves the book's contents: “My own pleasure in photography – what images can convey about nature, why and how the book's photographs were taken – lies at the heart of the story.”
How deceptive that Hong Kong shows as just a speck on world maps! “To explore Hong Kong's countryside is to delight in its complex, surprising landscapes. There are rugged uplands, lowlands and a coastline of endless intricacy. Almost everywhere hillsides offer exhilarating vistas, of spurs and ridges, ravines and gullies, cliffs and promontories, bays and islands. In remote sequestered valleys, and through the ranges and uplands, much of the country is wild and beautiful. In places one can hike for days yet barely see a soul. In others, hillsides look onto tower blocks packed with people.”
Having done library research allows Stokes to reveal details unfamiliar even to Hong Kong residents. “Of all Lamma's archaeological sites the Sham Wan dig is by far the most significant. There, beside its enclosed bay, below Mount Stenhouse, archaeologists have traced human settlement back to about 4000 BC.”
Even before publication, Hong Kong Nature Landscapes had widespread support -- from the MTR Corporation, Kadoorie Farm and other enterprises. Former Hong Kong governor David Wilson (1987-1992), who took a keen interest in helping nature to prosper, contributes a foreword. “There is no (other) large city in the world where access to beautiful countryside is so quick and so easy as in Hong Kong,” Wilson writes.
Originally from Australia, Stokes grew up in Hong Kong. He studied in England and later wrote extensively about Australia's history and landscape. In 1993, he returned to Hong Kong and took plenty of photos during the next decade.
While Hong Kong's urban skyline changes constantly against dense curtains of smog, the “nature landscapes” stay much the same. Not only does this book show a different side of the place, but it reveals the best spots. Without “nature landscapes”, life in Hong Kong might prove intolerable.
“That many of the images portray places close to the urban districts is striking and, for Hong Kong people, important. That only slightly farther from the busy, hurrying city there exist places of untrammeled grandeur is a source of wonder. Indeed, surely a cause for celebration.”
Approval rating: 82 per cent.
For more information: www.hkupress.org or www.photo-heritage.com
(November 4, 2010)
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