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.