FCC club lunch with Edward STOKES

Speaker: Edward STOKES
Founder Director, The Photographic Heritage Foundation

Topic: Asia’s historical photographs: publishing the region’s hidden gems

Mr. STOKES’s photo talk will reflect on a three-year journey to create The Photographic Heritage Foundation, and why photographs from the past engage people today.

Varied aspects of Asia’s rich cultures and heritage have been compromised by development. Keenly aware of this, and of the many invaluable photographs ‘hidden’ in archives and collections, The Photographic Heritage Foundation — a not-for-profit body — was established in 2008. A bridge between images and their places of origin, the Foundation aims to locate forgotten photographs and publish them in books and online. As illustrated in Mr. STOKES’s talk, these include the work of Asia cameraman John Thomson (1860s and 1870s), Hong Kong’s own pioneer photographer Afong (1860s), and other photographers whose documentary work today enriches our appreciation of earlier places and people.

Edward STOKES, a well-known Hong Kong photographer and author, is also the founder director of The Photographic Heritage Foundation. The Foundation’s genesis was the success of Hedda Morrison’s Hong Kong. Presenting Morrison’s evocative photos of Hong Kong of 1946-47, and historical essay texts, the book is a unique record of a long vanished Hong Kong. The Foundation’s first book, Hong Kong As It Was, a new edition of Hedda Morrison’s 1946 photographs, will be launched at the lunch. The book is published in association with Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University and Hong Kong University Press.