Born in Shanghai, China in 1932, Fan Ho later moved to Hong Kong with his family, where he began to take photographs using a Rolleiflex camera given to him by his father. In the beginning, Fan Ho considered photography an engaging pastime. But as he roamed the streets and alleyways of Hong Kong, he was drawn to the city and its inhabitants. Whether it’s the slums of Hong Kong, its pulsing city streets, or its light-filled stairwells, the patterns of daily life are the inspiration for his still photographs. Inspired by the Bauhaus point of view and a strong sense of abstraction, Fan Ho’s cosmopolitan, multicultural Hong Kong becomes a magical city of light and dark, shadow and substance, crowds and isolation. The experimental nature of Fan Ho’s vision is immediately apparent in these photographs, which are notable not only for their altered perspectives, dramatic compositions and surreal abstraction, but also for the view they provide of the markets, streets and slums of Hong Kong.