Archives Within the Archive
At 25: Artists’ Early Worlds - Holly Lee
1. Holly’s literary background and her circle of friends
2. Printmaking and her early works
3. Her years of photo-text projects
4. The beginnings of our studio practice
5. Contact prints as a record of an artist’s daily life
6. Photo albums as personal archives
Holly and I first met in 1974. Although that first encounter lasted from the afternoon until almost midnight, it was simply the beginning of an ordinary friendship. Afterwards, we saw each other only occasionally.
Things changed in early 1975. Around the Lunar New Year, Holly decided to buy her first camera with the annual bonus she had received from work. I helped her find a Japanese-market NIKOMAT, identical to the international model but sold at a slightly lower price. We bought it at Hang Kee (亨記) in Central, one of the camera shops trusted by professionals in those days. My father had been a customer there for years.
At first, the camera was simply a tool. Holly used it to document her own work and, whenever we visited exhibitions, to photograph artworks that interested her. During her lunch breaks from the main branch of Hang Seng Bank in Central, we sometimes visited Yi Chuen (藝川), a small upstairs gallery on Li Yuen West Street. The gallery was run by Ho Tao, the architect who later designed the Hong Kong Arts Centre building, completed in 1977. Holly herself worked at the Hong Kong Arts Centre for less than a year before joining my studio full-time, where she began her career as a professional photographer.
It is a pity that we no longer have that first camera. In the 1990s, my youngest brother wanted to learn photography, and we gave it to him without much thought. Looking back today, what we would treasure is not the camera itself, but the memories it quietly carries from those formative years.
By the middle of 1975, Holly and I were seeing each other much more often. Around that time, I carved a small stone seal for her, bearing her Chinese pen name, Tong Tu (銅土), literally “Copper Clay.” The seal itself has long since disappeared. What survives is this seal impression, printed on a sheet of rice paper and dated on the day I carved it. Recently, I also rediscovered one of Holly’s early woodblock print works, Someday You Wake Up in the Early Morning (1976), bearing the same seal. Together, these two fragments are the only traces that remain of that little stone.
As far as I can remember, I carved the seal while studying Chinese calligraphy, one of the courses at the First Institute of Art and Design. It may well have been the only stone seal I have ever carved. Holly and I attended the same evening school, although she had enrolled two years before me. We were not in the same class, as she was a year ahead of me in the programme. According to her diary, she entered the Institute in 1971, the same year she began working at Hang Seng Bank. Among her classmates were Li Kam Fai and Joe So Ching-yuen. They later became our mutual friends, although I had first known both of them through other circles.
Her diary also reminded me that she entered the Institute together with Donna Lok (駱笑平), although Donna left after a short time, perhaps during her first year. I imagine it was around 1972 that Donna met Cheung King-hung (張景熊), better known as KH, or Siu Hak (小克). Cheung’s literary and visual practice had a profound influence on Donna and, indirectly, on Holly as well. Looking through our early photo albums today, I am reminded that some of those snapshots were actually taken by Cheung.
Through Cheung, Donna and Holly gradually became part of the literary circle around Leung Ping-kwan, Betty Ng (Ng Hui-ben), Xi Xi, and many others. These were the final years of Chinese Student Weekly (《中國學生周報》), where Ping-kwan edited the poetry section. After the weekly ceased publication, many members of that circle continued their work through a new venture, The Thumb Weekly (《大拇指周報》, 1975–1987). Earlier, Ping-kwan had also founded the literary magazine The Four Seasons (《四季》, 1972–1975). Donna and Holly became increasingly involved in these publications, contributing not only writing but also visual illustrations.
Because of Holly, I gradually came to know some of the people in this circle and occasionally joined their gatherings. I had begun my own writing activities slightly earlier than Holly, although I moved within a different circle of friends. Holly later designed the cover for Leung Ping-kwan’s Shimen the Dragon-keeper (《養龍人師門》, 1979). My own collaboration with Ping-kwan came much later, after he returned to Hong Kong from his studies at the University of California, San Diego. In 1985, I designed one of his book covers.
Although Holly and I spent much more time together during 1975, the beginning of our relationship was far from smooth. She often dreamed of leaving Hong Kong, hoping to escape the pressures of family life. Much of that burden came from her mother’s increasingly unpredictable behaviour. At that time, a lot of things in Holly’s mind, might be temporary, as though she might leave at any moment. I was also one and a half years younger than she was, while she imagined a future with someone older. Her father had left Hong Kong before she was born, and in one of her diaries she wrote that, no matter how deeply I loved her, it could never replace the absence of a father’s love.
Looking back now, I think those early circumstances shaped much of Holly’s emotional landscape and, in turn, her work. The many layers of feeling that later surfaced in her photography and writing can already be sensed in these early years. In her later years, after she had gained complete confidence in her writing, she planned to write both a novel and a long poem drawn directly from her own experiences.
All these fragments from our early years shaped the paths we would follow together. In 1976, alongside our woodblock prints, we began collaborating on projects that combined writing and photography. At the beginning of 1977, we established our first studio in Lan Kwai Fong. Our shared literary background would become one of the foundations of our philosophy and practice of photography in the years that followed.