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
In 1978, Holly turned twenty-five.
It marked one of the decisive turning points in her life. After five years at the bank, followed by less than a year at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, she made a life-changing decision. On the first day of 1978—her twenty-fifth birthday—she joined the studio and began her life as a professional photographer.
Ahead of her lay excitement, uncertainty, challenge, and no small amount of pressure. She stepped out of the protected rhythm of a nine-to-five working life into one where three consecutive days of round-the-clock work were not uncommon. It was a profession filled equally with joy and exhaustion. She entered it as a complete newcomer. Everything was fresh, unfamiliar, and waiting to be learned.
Neither Holly nor I had received formal training in professional photography, nor had either of us apprenticed under an established photographer, either of those believed to be a conventional way to enter the profession. As a child, I had occasionally assisted my father, who practised photography in a more traditional manner, but that experience could hardly prepare me for the demands of a photographer working in the creative industry. Holly’s knowledge of professional photography was even more limited. She was, by her own admission, beginning almost from zero.
We were fortunate in one respect. The deposit from my first commercial assignment, together with Holly’s contribution, allowed us to purchase a SINAR model F view camera, enabling us to complete a month-long commission in a friend’s vacant apartment. When the second payment arrived, we were able to rent our first studio, a modest five-hundred-square-foot space in Lan Kwai Fong. It was an encouraging beginning, although how we would sustain ourselves beyond those first assignments remained an unanswered question.
With this editorial note, I am not going to dwell on details of the long process we learned our profession. Our education mainly came through constant reading, endless conversations, and the practical demands of one assignment after another. Looking back, I believe three disciplines shaped the way we approached photography: literature, advertising, and design.
Literature had always been our common language. Before photography, writing was our first creative practice. Although we left literature writing while we were still very green, it remained the foundation of how we thought, observed, and constructed meaning. Holly would eventually return to writing in the final years of her life, but that belongs to another chapter.
Advertising fascinated me less as a business than as a way of thinking. I was interested in concept development and copywriting, whose roots, for me, lay in literature and particularly in surrealist poetry. Design, meanwhile, taught us the balance of form and space. Although I never worked professionally in either advertising or design, over the following decades I had one constant client—our own projects.
These experiences filled the gap left by our lack of photographic training. In theory, we entered the profession with almost no photographic background; in practice, we brought with us another set of disciplines that allowed us to discover our own methods rather than inherit someone else’s.
The year 1978 also marked an important milestone in the history of the studio, she witnessed two studios in the same year. Holly recorded two events in her diary on February 11, 1977: she submitted her resignation from the bank, and on the same day I paid the deposit for our Lan Kwai Fong studio. In the following year, toward the end of 1978, we moved our working space to Wyndham Street, where a larger studio better suited our growing practice, while the Lan Kwai Fong premises became our living quarters.
The new studio also marked the beginning of a clearer division in our work. Although we shared the same studio, assistants, and creative discussions, our practices gradually developed in different directions. Holly concentrated on people—fashion, portraiture, and editorial assignments—while I focused primarily on objects and still life. Her ease with people, together with her sensitivity and communication skills, naturally led her toward photographing individuals. Yet behind every assignment lay shared conversations, collaborative planning, and mutual criticism.
Interestingly, Holly chose to photograph people with large-format view cameras, ranging from 4×5 to 8×10. This was far from common, particularly for a photographer just entering the profession. That became a character of practice of her early days.
Our background in advertising and design proved invaluable during those early years. We devoted as much attention to how the studio identity presented as to the photographs we produced. From promotional mailers and advertisements to stationery and printed materials, in every detail. For an almost unknown studio, thoughtful presentation opened doors within the creative community. Assignments gradually increased, and each commission became another opportunity to learn. Those early years were exhilarating, but they were also filled with uncertainty. Looking back, I remember them as exciting years, though often accompanied by sleepless nights.
We now define the period from 1976 to 1987 as our Early Years. Archives Within the Archive, Part III focuses primarily on the beginnings of that decade, centring on the years around Holly’s twenty-fifth birthday rather than the developments after 1980, which belong to the later chapter of the Early Years.
Within only a few years Holly had established herself as one of the significantly active professional photographers of her generation in Hong Kong. On the other side of the development, in 1981 we presented our first two-person exhibition, camerawork, holly & wingo, at the Hong Kong Arts Centre. During the same year she began her first major body of personal work, Pictures of Friends, Artists, and Others (Op. 1, 1981–1986). We were married shortly before the exhibition, and in 1983 our daughter, Iris, was born.