Review: F11 Photography Museum, Hong Kong

F11 exterior

In preparation for this month’s visit to Hong Kong, I checked online to see if the city had a photography museum.  There is in fact a lovely new facility housed in a recently refurbished early 20th century building, but viewable only by appointment, and only on certain days of the week.  Planning ahead was fortunate and is imperative if you don’t want to miss a visit.

F11 is one of the few private museums in Hong Kong and the only one dedicated to photography.  At present there is no permanent exhibit apart from the Leica camera collection, some pieces of which are rotated on a regular basis.  Photo exhibits are held several times a year, running from a week to a couple of months.  On display during my visit was a collection of 85 black-and-white images by Swiss photographer Werner Bischof taken during his one and only 1952 visit to Hong Kong.  These were what you might think of as street or travel photography, impressionistic images of a Westerner’s first visit to Hong Kong.  Perhaps a third of the images exhibited were noteworthy, images I would look at more carefully or care to revisit.  The remainder were perhaps notable 50 years ago; today they appear rather pedestrian (though may be of great historic value, as revealed in the following paragraph).   Included in the exhibit were several period artefacts, including magazines featuring Bischof’s images, a guide to Hong Kong, and a horse-racing guide, among others.

Exhibit Review: The Traveling Museum of the Caucasus

During my one-week stay in Tbilisi, I had the great fortune to attend a temporary exhibit (now closed) at the Museum of Georgia featuring the photographic work of Alexander Roinashvili, a 19th century ethnographer popularly known as Georgia’s first photographer.  He was, it seems, interested mostly in the documentary function of the camera, which he carried across Georgia recording the folk ways of the country’s many villages, towns and cities.  He worked in a variety of genres to document all manner of life, from landscape to portrait to still life.  He was as well a collector of artifacts, amassing a huge collection of tools, weapons, clothing, furniture, and other items of everyday life, many of which were on display at last month’s exhibit, along with a selection of photos, largely landscapes and portraits.  While the collection on display was quite impressive, I was somewhat disappointed in the relative lack of images compared to artifacts, but otherwise thrilled to learned about such an important, resourceful, and dedicated photographer.  A two-volume set of images has been published in Georgia, and before better sense prevailed I almost bought one. For those that might be interested in exploring, two useful web links are provided below.

Exhibit Review: Dubai Photo Exhibition, 16-19 March 2016

I’m not much in the mood to write a long description of the exhibit:  the sponsors, the concept, design, number of peices, types of work, artists represented.  I think anyone who finds this blog post can find most of that information at the exhibition website.  I did, though, want to leave a post as a record of attendance and to perhaps also make a note of those artists I discovered and about whom I’d like to know more.

Friday morning was a good time to attend as there were few visitors and thus no body contact with strangers, annoying cell phone conversations, or crying children.  In fact I think there were more men in black suits - the event security team - than visitors.