New Zealand photographer Cody Ellingham believes that there are two versions of Hong Kong: a real one that exists with its monumental skyscrapers and one that we remember fondly in our memories.
The series “Fantasy city by the harbour” – from which a book of photographs was also born – stems precisely from an attempt to try to understand how we can return to the “other” Hong Kong, of which only the dreams and atmospheres dense with neon and people frantically roaming the streets of the Asian city remain.
The shots mainly show the architecture of the city, studied through the calm moments of the metropolis. In fact, people never appear, a challenge considering that Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas on the planet with its 7 million inhabitants.
In the streets, therefore, only silence remains, interrupted by the buzzing of neon lights, which Cody Ellingham uses to accentuate the aesthetic effect of the views, as if they were sets for a futuristic film set in a hyper-technological city of androids and flying machines.
The photographer had the opportunity to study the city during his frequent travels, choosing moments of calm to make even more vivid and real the Hong Kong that persisted in his memories but was difficult to find in everyday life. The fog favours the general suspended atmosphere of the scenes, the large billboards look like TVs left on after falling asleep on the sofa while the lights of the skyscrapers belie the whole thing: the city is not sleeping.
