Justin Tsui Man-yin and Tse Pak-chai have spent a lot of time over the past six months peering into other people's fridges. Travelling from posh homes in Mid-Levels to public housing estates in Ngau Tau Kok, the pair have been poking into freezers and chiller trays as part of a scheme to document the identities and lifestyles of a cross-section of Hongkongers.
'It's illegal to rifle through people's rubbish, but there's nothing to stop us from going through fridges,' says Tse, who photographed the contents while his partner interviewed the owners. 'If the owners answer our questions honestly, there's a lot that we can discover about a family simply by looking at their fridge.'
The results of Tse and Tsui's inquiries - an initiative by the Community Museum Project in collaboration Oxfam and the CSSA Review Alliance - will be displayed in an exhibition which opens tomorrow.
'We've always been interested in material culture and looking at objects and how they reflect the owner or user,' says Howard Chan Pui-hoe, a curator at the community museum. 'The sharp rise in food prices this year has made the idea of photographing fridges even more relevant.'
The two investigators began by identifying people prepared to open their fridges to scrutiny and then whittled their final selection down to 25 households thought to have the most interesting mix. They often spent three to four hours at each home, with Tse emptying out the contents and painstakingly photographing even the most mundane items while Tsui quizzed the owners on their food habits and how they used their fridges.
Some were so packed the pair had to rope in a volunteer to help with the unloading. In the course of the clear-out, owners were often embarrassed to discover long-forgotten items, including even fertility drugs and, of course, food that had spoiled.
