Joint photography exhibition recalls dramatic scenes of Occupy movement

Blindspot Gallery's exhibition of photographsy by Souh Ho and Ken Kitano coincides with the first anniversary of Hong Kong police attempts to disperse democracy protesters with pepper spray and tear gas in the city's Admiralty district on September 27.

Ho presents an intelligent and varied overview of the main Admiralty and Mong Kok protest sites,  while works by Ken Kitano are from his continuing Our Face series of portraits taken during the Occupy protests.

Ho shows a long wall of black and white documentary-style photographs, using as mounts the plastic ties that were ubiquitous in those months: profusely employed by protesters to bind together stacked steel barricades and by police to bind the hands of arrested protesters.

Ho’s work includes long and wide landscape photographs of the transformed streets, counterpointed by the poignant minutiae of a protest.

He also screens a marathon five-hour series of videos silently tracking the movements and daily activities of people in Admiralty.

Another series of large-format photographs show key Hong Kong buildings and structures, including Central’s temporarily pedestrianised Harcourt Road underpass, highlighted with a grey-shaded vertical-lined painted skyline emphasising Hong Kong’s severe urban environment.