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Mabel Lui

Macau has experienced a whirlwind of change since its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1999.
The biggest was the government ending tycoon Stanley Ho Hung-sun’s gaming industry monopoly in 2002. The decision gave rise to a new wave of casino resorts that housed hotels, giant malls, theatres and convention halls.
In 2006, the city’s annual gambling revenues overtook those of the Las Vegas Strip, reaching US$7 billion. That was also the year American photographer Adam Lampton set foot in Macau for the first time.
Having just completed a master of fine arts degree at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, he had been awarded a Fulbright fellowship – part of a United States cultural exchange programme – to photograph Macau and its ongoing evolution, using a large-format film camera for optimal image quality.

“My dad, for many years, taught US-China political relations as a professor, so I grew up with an understanding that China was, by default, interesting and important,” he says.
“It blew my mind when I discovered there was [such a place] with this combination of Portuguese culture and Chinese culture.”
Working with a traditional 4x5 film camera – which uses film measuring 4 inches by 5 inches that comes on individual sheets – Lampton spent a year photographing various scenes in Macau. He returned in 2015 and 2019 to capture additional images.
Now 71 of his photographs have been compiled into a book, titled Nothing Serious Can Happen Here: Photographs from Macau, which will be published by Kehrer Verlag in September in Europe and Asia.


The name of the book is taken from W.H. Auden’s 1938 poem Macao, a playful take on the place he called “a weed from Catholic Europe” where gambling and prostitution happened in the shadows of its many churches.
Lampton says the city remains a strange blend of extremes. He recalls the first time he got off the hydrofoil from Hong Kong and was met with the sight of the artificial volcano at Macau Fisherman’s Wharf.
“You have these beautiful Chinese and Portuguese historical buildings sitting right next to a very cheap-looking fake volcano. You could say that that volcano cheapens the real stuff, but you could also say, no, maybe the truly historical stuff elevates that stuff, right? It kind of all blends together,” he says.
“The poem is talking about those same contrasts that I am interested in visually. You have a church standing next to, [Auden] says, a brothel, but you could swap it with a casino.”


Lampton’s initial goal was to capture historic buildings and their interiors, but he quickly pivoted once he gained a better understanding of the city.
“It just became so evident that the story was really about the development and the confluence of these different motivations, between the casinos, Portuguese history and Chinese history.”
So during his first stint in Macau, Lampton spent many of his days roaming around the Cotai area, observing the casinos that had just begun to break ground. The early pages of his book feature a photograph of the City of Dreams casino under construction, and another of a lion sculpture being hoisted into The Venetian.


But he felt it was important to contrast the grandiose nature of Macau’s new buildings with other aspects of the city.
“I didn’t want the whole thing to be just about casinos and construction, because there’s so much to Macau that’s rich and interesting beyond that,” he says.
As a result, readers will also see images of historic buildings that show Macau’s Chinese and Portuguese influences, such as the Mandarin’s House and the Dom Pedro V Theatre, the latter being the first Western-style theatre built in China.
There are also photographs of everyday people, such as Anni and Dog, Artist Sketching and Teens on Grandma’s Grave during Qingming Festival.



In total, Lampton shot over 2,000 images during his first year in Macau.
“With digital cameras, that sounds like nothing,” he says. But the length of time it takes to set up a large-format camera meant many exhausting eight-hour shooting sessions.
When he returned to the city in 2015 and 2019, he aimed to capture photos that would offer a before-and-after contrast with his first trip. However, he discovered it was difficult to return to the same spots he had shot from earlier, as the city had changed so much.




Still, he was glad to discover that much remains of old Macau.
“I don’t know if it was their intention, but [the casinos on the peninsula are] pretty isolated to just one area,” he says.
“Everyone that goes to gamble is really going to that one place, and if you don’t want to be around that, then you don’t really have to. I hope that doesn’t change.”


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“Prince”, Bellboy at The 13 Hotel, by Adam Lampton, taken on August 10, 2019. Photo: Adam Lampton


“Prince”, Bellboy at The 13 Hotel, by Adam Lampton, taken on August 10, 2019. It is one of thousands of images the American photographer shot of Macau between 2006 and 2019, from half-built casinos to local people. Photo: Adam Lampton

The Grand Lisboa, by Adam Lampton, taken on January 29, 2007. Photo: Adam Lampton

Teens on Grandma’s Grave during Qingming Festival, by Adam Lampton, taken on April 5, 2007. Photo: Adam Lampton

Cotai Construction Entrance, by Adam Lampton, taken on March 2, 2007. Photo: Adam Lampton

Eiffel Tower, The Parisian Macao, by Adam Lampton, taken on May 31, 2015. Photo: Adam Lampton

Portrait in the Dom Pedro V Theatre Basement, by Adam Lampton, taken on December 12, 2006. Photo: Adam Lampton

Lion of Venice, by Adam Lampton, taken on May 8, 2007. Photo: Adam Lampton

Florist at Crown Macau Grand Opening, by Adam Lampton, taken on May 12, 2006. Photo: Adam Lampton

Artist Sketching, by Adam Lampton, was taken on April 18, 2007. Photo: Adam Lampton

Anni and Dog, by Adam Lampton, taken on November 25, 2007. Photo: Adam Lampton

Edmund Ho Lighting a Firework, by Adam Lampton, taken on February 17, 2007. Ho was Macau’s first chief executive, serving from 1999 to 2009. Photo: Adam Lampton

Apartment Buildings at Night, Taipa, by Adam Lampton, taken on December 1, 2006. Photo: Adam Lampton

Arched Doorway, The Mandarin’s House, by Adam Lampton, taken on December 14, 2006. Photo: Adam Lampton

The Macau Jockey Club, by Adam Lampton, taken on December 17, 2006. Photo: Adam Lampton

American photographer Adam Lampton. Photo: Adam Lampton

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Let’s go Cha Chaan Teng, by Kitty Wong, part of her Hong Kong Baby Girl exhibition. Photo: Kitty Wong

Kitty Wong at work in her studio. Photo: Kitty Wong

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Lifestyle

Arts & Culture

Culture

Books

Adam Lampton’s photos taken between 2006 and 2019 show the crossroads of Macau’s gaming industry and Chinese-Portuguese history


Adam Lampton took thousands of photos of Macau between 2006 and 2019, from half-built casinos to local people, that show the crossroads of its gaming industry and Chinese-Portuguese history.


Photography

Macau