Photographer Captures Hong Kong’s Heart-Stopping Verticality
French photographer Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze moved to Hong Kong in 2009, inspired by its fast pace and verticality. He now documents the densely populated city rich with life, abundance of details, and visual contrast.
Initially, it was the architecture itself that drew Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze’s eye, culminating in his series Vertical Horizon that showcases the sheer scale of the skyscrapers. However, he quickly found inspiration in the inhabitants, thousands of lives, and a city teeming with life and always in motion.
“What I like shooting the most are visually rich scenes, with plenty of details, and a single living thing that stands out from them, like a tree, a man, or a bird. I usually walk a lot around the district I love, and when I find a building or a cityscape that I like, I wait to see if something can bring life to this scene,” he says.
“When photographing people and birds in the city, for me, the most rewarding aspect is capturing postures that last just a fraction of a second but convey all the life and mood of the scene. Because these moments are not easily controllable, it feels like something magical happens when we capture such an authentic scene. I think it brings poetry to the world.”
With his attention turned to capturing moments of life within the city, his style leans away from tight portraits and more towards an environmental portrait that showcases the subject small within a grand composition as if a part of the city itself. His favorite area of Hong Kong, which continues to reignite his love of photography, is Kowloon. He finds that the older areas are full of color, vitality, and the patina of time.
That patina is shown in his photographs, a cacophony of color, each building a contrasting color, years of layers of paint cracked and peeling with windows and washing hung out to dry, evidence of the life within.
His sense of timing immaculate, Jacquet-Lagrèze captures gestures and moments that offer a glimpse into life in a city hailed as the world’s fourth most densely populated. Especially striking are his images of the construction workers, the unassuming stars of his current project, who use bamboo scaffolding to scale the buildings, many stories high, perched on inches of bamboo in death-defying feats.
“For my latest series, the biggest challenge was finding men building bamboo scaffolding, as they are working in different places every day. The small scaffolding they are building require sometimes just one hour of work, so I need to be there at the right time and the right place. It requires a lot of walking, patience, and observation. And actually, even these three are not enough,” he explained.
“Before this series, I used to walk a lot with earphones in my ears to help me focus on what I see. But for spotting these men, my eyes alone were not enough as the amount of details constantly surrounding you when walking is just too intense. Many times I would miss a man on a facade with just my eyes. In order to find them I had to be alert to the sounds they make when moving the bamboo poles or drilling holes in the wall.”
The spark for his series projects begins with exploring the city, allowing a theme to uncover itself naturally via what is happening. He never goes out with a concrete idea, forcing a plan, but instead lets a simple walk in the city reveal the next visual narrative.
This intuitive approach lends itself to creative compositions applying his style while finding a balance in documenting the scene. While he takes into account guidelines like the rule of thirds while out photographing, Jacquet-Lagrèze prefers to capture his images intentionally wider, allowing him to make compositional decisions later on a large computer screen rather than rush at the moment via the camera’s viewfinder or LCD.
“The great improvement of digital cameras in the past decades has certainly been an important factor in enabling me to create all my work. I shoot with a Sony a7R IV and various prime lenses, such as 55mm, 90mm, 135mm, and 300mm. I love these lenses because of their great details and sharpness from corner to corner. When coupled with the very high resolution of latest Sony cameras, it allows me to crop with a lot of freedom in my photos to find the best composition. I am quite inspired by Fan Ho’s view on cropping. He said something like: ‘Photography comes to life twice. Firstly when you press the shutter, and secondly when you crop it,'” Jacquet-Lagrèze said.
His most recently finished body of work, Echoing Above, was captured in just such a way, documenting spontaneous moments in the city by letting the compositions breathe so that with cropping he could hone in and curate the viewers’ experience. Echoing Above is a trilogy highlighting elements of natural life viewed from the city streets that inspire him most: the trees, workers, and the many birds.
Jacquet-Lagrèze said, “I am especially proud of my latest body of work, Echoing Above. I started it by shooting trees growing wildly on residential buildings in the middle of the city. While looking up to find the trees, I spotted the men building scaffolding. And by looking for the men, I discovered the variety of birds that live in the heights of the city. I built this photo book as a trilogy that follows this very spontaneous and instinctive evolution of my focus. It is the first time I self-published my book, giving me full control over every step, and I really enjoyed the process. I am very happy with the result and I am really glad to see people’s reactions when they view my book.”
Echoing Above will be featured in an upcoming exhibition May 10-25 by the Blue Lotus Gallery, Hong Kong. It is being held to coincide with the French May Arts Festival, one of the largest cultural events in Asia held annually by the Association Culturelle France – Hong Kong Limited to promote French art and culture.
That connection to his birthplace, France, has never left. Having spent sixteen years capturing life in Hong Kong, Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze feels ready to return to his roots.
“I would like to create a new series of work that is not about Hong Kong, as I have already photographed it extensively. I originally come from Paris, where I spent my first 20 years. I hope that in the future, I will be able to develop a new series of photographs of this city where I was born. This is my biggest aspiration for the future.”
Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze’s work can be found on his website and Instagram, with books and limited edition fine art prints available.
Image credits: Photographs by Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze.
