It was only after it was announced that Kowloon Walled City was to be cleared and demolished that, in late 1987, I first visited the City, initially only to photograph it before it disappeared forever. As a trained architect my initial focus was to capture images of the City as a unique architectural curiosity, but as I began to explore the City’s interiors, it became clear that the real story was the extraordinary community it contained. By chance, a mutual friend introduced me to the Canadian freelance photographer Greg Girard, who had also been drawn to the City and had begun to photograph the City’s residents. The book quickly became a reality
The final ingredient was how best to tell the residents’ stories. My feeling was that the resident’s should explain their stories in their own words and an intrepid local history graduate, Emmy Lung, joined the team and over the next three years we interviewed and photographed over 30 people who lived and/or worked there. And in 1993, City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City was published – a simple photographic record of the place and some of those who lived or worked there, but with little in the way of explanation or historical context.
Unexpectedly, however, the book sold well and remained in print for nearly 20 years, when the decision was made to bring the story up to date, adding numerous images not used in the original edition and, more importantly, adding well-researched essays on the City’s history; its dramatic post-war growth; the truth behind the many myths that swirled around the City and its dark past; and its growing impact on popular culture in Hong Kong and around the world
City of Darkness Revisited, was published in 2014 and both editions are now available here. Click on the preferred cover for more details on that edition.