HONG KONG NIGHTS
2016 - 2020
I moved to Hong Kong from Saint Joseph – a small lake town in Michigan. Just three months after getting married, my wife and I joked that we were going on a permanent honeymoon as we left the blizzards of the Midwest just two days before Christmas. Hong Kong had always been a Neverland to me – an unreachable exotic island that I would only experience in literature and cyberpunk movies. But I got a job teaching photography, and Hong Kong offered a new life in full throttle.
Over seven million citizens co-exist on this small island. The unfamiliar language has become white noise, and personal space quickly evolved into a fantasy in itself. In my daily commute, I encounter a variety of obstacles - the mystery drips from the towers of a/c units or the smell pockets of the wet markets. This mountain city keeps me on my toes, and I love it.
But Hong Kong is currently steeped in its own mountain of controversies. Night photography has always been an escapism – a chance to put my schedule and phone down to explore the city without distraction. Especially now, I look for those quiet corners in a city that’s everything but quiet. It’s visceral, it’s anxious, but it’s the perfect melting pot of different cultures – all with their own relationship to the city of Hong Kong.