By Jonathan Shih
Fan Ho wasn’t just taking pictures—he was writing poems with light.
Born in Shanghai in 1931, he picked up a Rolleiflex camera at 14, a gift from his father, and learned to develop film in the family bathtub. When his family moved to Hong Kong in 1949, the city became his stage. He wandered through alleyways, wet markets, and sunlit streets, capturing moments most people walked past.
His photographs from the 1950s and ’60s turned ordinary life into timeless black-and-white theatre, with bold geometry, deep shadows, and beams of light cutting through the haze. Critics called him “the Henri Cartier-Bresson of the East,” and between 1958 and 1965, he was named among the world’s top ten photographers eight times.
Fan Ho also starred in and directed films, but his heart never left the streets. Today, his work lives on in museums worldwide, each frame a love letter to the Hong Kong that once was.
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