ZA :

That’s interesting. In the country of India, especially in the midst of our election, I find there to be a rapid decrease in unbiased news. Here, we are experiencing extreme narratives whether in newspapers, tv channels, or on social media. I was wondering what it’s like for you to navigate through this idea of truthful storytelling?

BK :

I think for me, I am interested in the multiple varieties of people in society. I have documented the rapid change in Hong Kong since the territory was handed over from Britain to China, after more than 150 years of British rule. The handover brought a mixture of both, uncertainty and hope. But, instead of outlining history, this work aims to document transitions in different facets of society, from singing "God Save the Queen" (the national anthem of British Hong Kong) to humming "people are slaves no more" (lyrics from the Chinese national anthem); from being old migrants to becoming new Hongkongers; and from making money as property agents to gaining power as rural landlords. So, I guess my focus is on ideologies, but also collecting materials through archives, forgotten photographs, and objects. When you talk about photography, the most powerful aspect is ‘time.’ When time passes, a photograph becomes even more powerful, but so do the objects surrounding certain ideologies. So, I think I tackle it by collecting and photographing these trajectories of events that showcase change.

ZA :

A story by you that really moved me was published as part of the Counter Histories edition of Aperture’s Spring 2024 magazine. It follows the relentless efforts of a mother, Yu Lai Wai, after her autistic son disappeared across the border from Hong Kong into China in 2000. Her search still continues. As written in Aperture, your ongoing project ‘For So Many Years When I Close My Eyes (2022–23),’ combines elements of Ms. Yu’s images and records trying to find her son, with your own maps and photographs created in locations related to her heartbreaking experience. Could you talk about what drew you to telling this story, and the process behind piecing it together?

BK :

This story is completely about the mother and the hope she carries after all these years of losing her son. What I find most interesting is that she isn’t a photographer, and still uses the tool of photography to map together where her son might have been. When she would see an unhoused man, and after verifying that the man wasn’t Han’er (her son Han, in Chinese), she would take his portrait. The polaroids include, in her handwriting, the man’s name, the location, and the date. I was so drawn to the fact that she isn’t concerned with the ‘art’ of photography, but instead just uses it as a medium of pure evidence. In fact, random people across the country also send her images of themselves claiming to be her son. Photography is stripped down to evidence alone. There is no concern with the beauty of it. Before I began working on this feature, I was purely taking standard shots of physical development and changes in Hong Kong. But over time, I realized that the real change could be seen through this counter histories that exist within the nation, and the politics behind them. This is what drew me to telling this story.

ZA :

As a photojournalist who is interested in the reality of the world that surrounds you, I was wondering if you were also keen on working on your own personal narratives? Do you ever photograph for yourself without thinking about the ‘larger picture’ per se?

BK :

Absolutely. Like I mentioned before, I love to collect things, and am also interested in gaming. A story that I’m excited about is collecting images from the Game Boy. It’s not something many people know, but about 20 years ago, the Gameboy had a feature where you could take 30 photographs from its inbuilt camera. The camera was produced in the early era of digital photography, and it was marketed to kids in the form of portable gaming gear. The storage capacity of the GB Camera is limited, but you can use a Game Boy printer to connect it, and use thermal paper to print the stored images. The paper is very sensitive to temperature and is not easy to keep. This concept of printing for long-term preservation is a bit different from what we are used to, and this transition is what really interested me. I sourced a lot of these from Japan, and it’s so intriguing to see what young people decided to capture there. I have multiple images of them in Cosplay costumes, and I can see how heavily influenced Hong Kong is by the Japanese culture.

ZA :

Through your documentation, how have you noticed the change in regimes affecting lives of citizens who encounter them? Do archives help with piecing together these stories in a more cohesive way?

BK :

I traveled around Taiwan over the past four years researching the phenomenon of societal amnesia, and to record stories of individuals and families with hidden memories during the martial law that began in 1949. Over 150,000 people were arrested, and as many as 4,000 people were executed until martial law was lifted in 1991. I collected the letters that dissidents wrote before their execution, which were concealed from the victims’ families by the government for more than 70 years, never sent, never received and never answered. The absence of these last letters marks the start of a reality based on distorted memories. I photographed individuals and families of the massacred, and their replies to the last notes from their late relatives. The images I’ve made and archival material I’ve collected speak to the hidden traumas and memories that have passed on, one generation to the next. Underlying these excavated memories are the absent presences — which leave their traces in the past, present and future.

ZA :

Apart from your work using archival material and graphics in moving stills, your project named ‘MCD Meal’ really caught my eye. It seems to be a menu card with visual patterns drawn across it repetitively. Could you talk about this in further detail? It’s interesting to see how your work is largely steeped in the ‘process’ of things.

BK :

I rarely eat a McDonald's breakfast. Right from secondary school up till college, eating a McDonald's breakfast usually meant gaming all night long the day before. But on a visit there recently, when I was ordering, I came across this quirky menu where I found a lag in the way that I was reading it. I was curious to see how my friends would read the same visual code, and so I asked them to draw the paths of reading and made photographs of it. The amazing thing is that some people seemed to have read it smoothly, without any lag at all. I am interested to know how people see things. Once I saw the trajectories they chose, I followed their vision and suddenly stopped getting stuck!