Foodscape, a collaboration with Leung Ping-kwan

My collaboration with Leung Ping-kwan began in 1985, when I designed the cover for his book Books and Cities. This project marked the start of an enduring creative partnership. Over the following years, I designed several of his book covers and created visual art for his poems and short stories across various literary publications.

In 1990, the exhibition Poetry and Photography at the City Hall Library, organized by the Hong Kong Urban Council, became a major milestone for our collaboration; it brought together the extensive body of work we had created during those preceding years. Looking back, those collaborations contributed significantly to shaping my photographic practice—specifically its core philosophy and the method of incorporating poetic fragments and narratives within a photographic image. This approach became a foundational element of my work during those early years.

Foodscape, begun in 1996 and presented in 1997, opened another chapter. This body of work differed significantly from much of my earlier photography, which had largely been driven by commercial assignments. From the outset, Foodscape was conceived as a cohesive series organized around a single theme, rather than a collection of individual pieces made for separate occasions. Some of the images grew from my impressions after reading Ping-kwan’s poems; others emerged from shared experiences that we subsequently reflected upon through our respective media. Pun Choi on New Year’s Eve was one such example.

Coincidentally, after I relocated to Toronto, I found myself gradually stepping away from assignment-based photography. The approach developed through Foodscape—working from a sustained theme—became central to the artistic practice that followed.

Foodscape debuted as part of a 1997 cultural event in Vancouver titled Cities at the End of Time: Hong Kong 1997, presented by The Pomelo Project. This initiative brought together artists and writers from Hong Kong, Canada, and the United States to showcase works addressing the cultural and social identity of Hong Kong. Curated by Scott Toguri McFarlane and Henry Tsang, Foodscape was exhibited at Artspeak in Vancouver from February 14 to March 15, 1997, before traveling to other Canadian cities.

For the exhibition, I presented ten works, each measuring 30 × 40 inches, printed on canvas and mounted on wood panels. Ping-kwan contributed ten accompanying poems, each paired with one of the visual pieces. These poems were displayed bilingually, featuring English translations by the late Martha Cheung. She also translated the titles of my visual works, as well as the overarching title, Foodscape.

The Foodscape series was created during the early to mid-part of 1996. At the time, I had no idea that we would soon be relocating to another city, and eventually, to another country. Because Foodscape is, at its core, an exploration of identity, this sudden life change became a vital layer of the context in which the work is now read. It was not until the summer of 1996 that our daughter raised the possibility of continuing her studies outside of Hong Kong. We then began discussing a family relocation to Canada. Ultimately, in September 1997, we immigrated to Toronto—a city entirely unfamiliar to us at the time—arriving just as our daughter began the new school year.

After Vancouver, the exhibition traveled to the McIntosh Gallery in Ontario. The organizer subsequently arranged for all the exhibited pieces to be shipped back to Hong Kong. However, because we were in the midst of our move and already away from Hong Kong, we could not receive them. For reasons that remain unclear, the entire collection of artworks was lost in transit.

Retrospectively, the loss of these original works added another poignant layer to the Foodscape story. A project deeply concerned with identity, place, and displacement unexpectedly acquired its own physical experience of exile. The disappearance of the tangible artwork became a permanent part of the narrative of the work itself.

Yet, our collaboration on Foodscape did not end with the 1997 exhibition. It continued to evolve, yielding new versions, variations, and additional pieces over the years. In 1998, the series was presented at the Goethe-Institut in Hong Kong as gelatin silver prints. It was subsequently shown in various iterations in cities like Tokyo and Munich, with new pieces added along the way. In 2004, a larger-scale exhibition was presented at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, bringing Foodscape into another chapter of the collaboration.