Ho Fan (Chinese: 何藩)
(born October 8, 1937) is a
celebrated Chinese photographer, film
director and actor. He has won over 280 awards from
international exhibitions and competitions worldwide since 1956 for
his photography.
By evoking Ho Fan (born
in 1937 in Shanghai), it immediately brings to mind the acclaimed
Hong Kong director and actor. However he is also famous for his
expressionist and experimental photographs that have been not only
chronicling Hong Kong street life from the 50s up to now, but also
exploring more pictorial themes such as shanshui (Chinese
word for traditional landscape painting), abstraction and nudes.
Ho Fan’s art is
anything but ‘straight photography’; instead he transforms it
into a more dramatic and expressionist art. He deliberately distorts
figures, accentuates light and shadow, fuses different negatives
together, alters the perspective, and so on.
Either in black and white
or in colours, Ho Fan’s photographs have yet something in common:
all possess the same deep sense of playfulness of composition,
theatricality, as if Ho Fan has been eager throughout all these years
to create a large body of visual records depicting an almost surreal
Hong Kong.
