Opening a Treasure Box of Memories: Hang Tam’s Kwun Tong, Telephone Booths, and Hong Kong Stories – 6/9/26, Blue Lotus Gallery Hong Kong

Posted: September 5th, 2026 | No Comments »

Opening a Treasure Box of Memories: Kwun Tong, Telephone Booths, and Hong Kong Stories with Photographer Hang Tam

Book Signing Event with Hang Tam 譚昌恒簽書會

Date: Sunday, September 6, 2026
Time: 3:00–5:00 PM
Venue: Blue Lotus Gallery
28 Pound Lane, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

Sunday, September 6, 2026, from 3:00–5:00 PM at Blue Lotus Gallery for an afternoon with Hong Kong photographer Hang Tam, who will present two of his handmade photobooks.

Many photographers represented by Blue Lotus Gallery have taken Hong Kong as the central subject of their work. These include Fan Ho, whose street scenes captured the city in the 1960s; Keith Macgregor, who photographed Hong Kong throughout the 1970s and 1980s; and Birdy Chu, whose photographs document Kai Tak Airport and the aircraft departing from it. Their work continues to resonate with audiences because it evokes personal memories of a city that is constantly evolving, preserving moments that might otherwise be lost to time.

Continuing this exploration of memory and Hong Kong, we will invite Hang Tam to the gallery to present two photobooks: It really is Kwun Tong? and Hello! Do You Remember Me? Through photographs, archival materials, found objects, and unusual book structures, both works explore the ways Hong Kong’s past can be remembered and experienced through the photobook.

Photographer Hang Tam will guide readers through his photobook, It really is Kwun Tong?, which takes the unique form of a silver box. Opening the box begins a treasure-hunt-like experience, with maps, letters, receipts, and a large collection of photographs that together lead readers on a visual journey through Kwun Tong.

It really is Kwun Tong? begins with Hang’s personal story, taking readers back to the Kowloon neighbourhood in the 1970s — formerly written as “Kwun Tong / 官塘” — and tracing the transformation of the same place across four decades. The project is also a “father-and-son collaboration” across time and space, bringing two generations together through images. In doing so, the photographs become fragments of memory that connect past and present, allowing the history of a changing neighbourhood to be rediscovered through the eyes of those who remember it.

Hang Tam’s latest work, Hello! Do You Remember Me? was shortlisted for the Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles in France. Inspired by Hong Kong’s collective memories of public telephone booths and old Yellow Pages directories, the book is conceived as an object of urban archaeology.

In the book, Hang interweaves images of public telephone booths, old telephone directories, and telecommunication objects from bygone eras with familiar lines from popular films, evoking the romance of an earlier age of communication. Once, people would step into public telephone booths to have private conversations, temporarily separated from the world around them. In an age when communication is more immediate and accessible than ever, what remains of that desire for connection? Hello! Do You Remember Me? becomes an old telephone booth on paper, a piece of paper architecture that can be opened and explored, bringing the memories of a disappearing world of communication back into view.

Together, It really is Kwun Tong? and Hello! Do You Remember Me? explore the idea that a photobook can be more than a collection of images, becoming an art object in its own right. Both works take archival photographs, old telephone directories, found objects, and elements of popular culture and transform them into something that can be explored and experienced as much as read. In doing so, they reflect on the layered memories of individuals, families, communities, and places, while exploring the relationship between photography and bookmaking.

At the event, Hang Tam will share the ideas and process behind the two books and sign copies for readers. A limited number of handmade editions will also be available for purchase on site.

Whether you are interested in Hong Kong’s collective memory, photography, or book design, this is a chance to encounter these two unusual photobooks with the photographer himself.

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