Photo exhibit explores Hong Kong protests
Revealing views capture emotion and energy
Images from the protests in Hong Kong have riveted the world for the past year. But they have a special resonance in Vancouver where many people either used to live in Hong Kong or know somebody who lives there now.
Which makes a new show at the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver timely. Revolution in Our Times features 36 photos of the Hong Kong protests by 18 photojournalists.
The photos are dramatic, beautiful and disturbing, an up-close and personal view of a people rising up against their government.
American Aaron Guy Leroux has been covering the protests since last June, and said they’re “intense, really chaotic, (and) a little scary.”
“Usually (they start with) a large mass peaceful protest that dwindles throughout the day,” related the 41-year-old, who flew in from Hong Kong for the opening on Thursday.
“They’re permitted, but the police have been cutting back. If the permit is till 10 o’clock, at 8:30 they’ll go (slaps his hand), ‘OK, this is now an illegal protest.’ And then it escalates from there.”
He has been in the middle of some wild action, such as a protest at a luxury mall on July 14 that spiralled out of control. You can see it in his photo of a riot policeman striding toward him, yelling, with his baton extended in one hand and his shield in the other.
“The police had corralled a couple of thousand protesters into this mall,” he explained. “They blocked people from leaving on the metro and sent police into the mall and caused a massive (clash), basically an actual riot. Pepper spray everywhere, police beating people, protesters beating police, a police officer got his thumb bitten off, a lot of innocent people got hurt ... it was chaos.”
Leroux has another photo in the exhibit of a protester pouring water on a tear-gas canister.
“The police were lobbing tear gas shells over towards where we were, just constantly, poom-poom, poom-poom, poom-poom,” he recounted.
“One landed next to me and this guy, a protester, just walked over and poured his water on it to put it out.”
Another photographer on hand for the exhibition was Adam Malamis from London, Ont. Malamis has an aerial panorama of thousands of people protesting at the Chinese University of Hong Kong that shows the sheer size of the protests. But he also has a touching close-up photo of some elderly people each holding a hand over one of their eyes.
“It was a solidarity protest with the young lady who lost her right eye (in a confrontation with the police), that’s why they’re covering their eye,” said Malamis.
The participating photographers submitted about 500 photos to three judges, who selected the photos in the show. There will be QR codes attached to the images that visitors can scan to hear the photographers talking about their shot.