(Central Market, c 1960)
The Hong Kong University Visual Archive has this to say about the local master photographer:
Mak has worked as executive editor for Photoart and Photo Pictorial in Hong Kong. He has been Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Photographic Association of Hong Kong and Asian Photographic Association of Singapore. He strives to combine the documentary and the expressive functions of photography in his work. His albums Fung Mak Portfolio: The Wind, The Sunshine, and The Foliage and Mak Fung: Hong Kong Once Was were published in 1992 and 1997 respectively.
From a description of the image featured today, it is pointed out in Mak's Central Market the busy thoroughfare of the market is dramatically transformed by the raking light pouring in from an internal courtyard. All the components of the photograph aer flawlessly aligned into a filmic narrative, from the Bauhaus-inspired architecture and the opalescent beams of light to the face of the cigarette-smoking man lit improbably by the light reflected from the floor. For the fraction of a second that it took fro the camera to create the photograph, Mak's figures become speculative actors in a wider drama.
This is very well said about the captivating image. In line with the discussion of paradoxical elements, the picture here can also be interpreted as having such elements. While the opalescent beams of light is reminiscent of the rays of light coming through the windows in a sacred Catholic church or monastery, the monotonous figures of the persons, not least the stony facial expression of the cigarette-smoking man, are reminders of nothing but probably zombies. This paradoxical, or interchangeably contradictory, mood bestows the image with an inner charm to draw viewers' attention.
For more of Mak's photographic works, check them out here.
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