HKDI Gallery

Leong Ka Tai Leong graduated from Rice University, Houston, Texas in the United States with a Master of Engineering degree. He worked in England but later changed career by going to work as a photographic assistant in Paris. In 1976 Leong returned to Hong Kong and set up studio Camera22. Ceasing studio work in 1982, he has been working mainly on editorial and corporate projects since 1984. Over the last 40 years, Leong has published 11 books on personal projects and another 11 books on collaborative projects. From 1976 to 2003, he has held nine solo shows in Hong Kong, Taipei, Macau and Singapore. He has also participated in numerous group shows in Hong Kong, New York, Perpignan, Denmark and Wellington. Leong has been a founding member and Chairman of the Hong Kong Institute of Professional Photographers (1992-94) as well as the Hong Kong Photographic Culture Association, organising the Hong Kong International Photo Festival in 2010 and 2012. He has received numerous local and international awards.

Photographer Leong Ka Tai and his wife crossed the Pacific Ocean on a container ship in late October 2013. 35 days without phone and internet were conducive to contemplation. Life on board, the sky, the sea, and the interactions with officers and crew, were recorded photographically. A time-lapse presentation of the view from the porthole in their cabin shows the changes of the environment and container configurations with the passage of time.

Before embarkation, Leong invited artists and friends to participate in a “Message in a Bottle” project, which involved messages being inserted into a bottle, one per day, and thrown into the Pacific Ocean. The idea is to explore the possibility of chance connections. There were 32 messages, hence 32 bottles in total. The date, time and GPS location of each throw, recorded on video, are exhibited simultaneously on the wall of TV monitors as an exploration of the deviations in similar actions.

Miraculously one of the bottles had been picked up – and there was a reply eight months later – by a marine biologist, Carla Crossman, in Vancouver at the Hecate Straits off British Columbia. Her reply to Leong completed the performance of the “send” and “receive” cycle. The meeting between the couple and Carla is shown in another video.

2013-11-03  15:46:23   N40.000  W175.750
© Leong Kai Tai 梁家泰

2013-10-27  16:10   N35.351  E129.790
Rebecca Ng 吳讚梅
© Leong Kai Tai 梁家泰

2013-11-02  16:11   N39.999  E175.906
Alfred Ko Chi Keung 高志強
© Leong Kai Tai 梁家泰

2013-10-27  16:10   N35.351  E129.790
anothermountainman 又一山人
© Leong Kai Tai 梁家泰

2013-10-24  10:18   N35.744  E120.972
Mimi Chun 秦美娜
© Leong Kai Tai 梁家泰 

2014-07-12
Carla Crossman 卡拉．哥斯文
© Leong Kai Tai 梁家泰

The second section is Leong’s authentic photographic documentation of their land travel with a focus on connecting with the communities in Latin American countries including Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Cuba. While it seems easier to travel in a tour group, what one sees in a group is constrained by the tourist agency. Travelling as an independent tourist, one has the freedom to see what one wants to, and in the process one acquires new insights and serendipitous experiences. Thus, photographs displayed in the exhibition are not merely depicting tourist sights, but observations on cultures both local and universal. Visitors are encouraged to experience Leong’s adventure through physical involvement by moving and looking around the “plateau of photographs” on which his works are displayed in the exhibition.

2014-02-02  15:27:00   Trinidad, Cuba
古巴，千里達
© Leong Kai Tai 梁家泰

2013-12-20  15:31:27   Ollantaytambo, Peru
秘魯，奧揚泰坦博
© Leong Kai Tai 梁家泰

2013-12-08  09:18:38   Chugchilán, Ecuador

厄瓜多爾，朱克基蘭
© Leong Kai Tai 梁家泰