Shek Kip Mei Estate

Last week I bought a Taschen book of Chinese propaganda posters, and it turned out that the posters are from the collection of Michael Wolf, the German photographer living in Hong Kong whose toy factory photos I posted about a month ago. It sent me back to Michael Wolf's website, where I (of course) found more photos I wanted to post. Shocker.

These photos are from a series called  "100 X 100", which shows the residents of a housing complex in Hong Kong called Shek Kip Mei Estate. This housing estate was built in response to a horrible fire that left thousands homeless in the 1950s, and is composed of 100 rooms that are a mere 100 square feet in size. Some people are overwhelmed by their stuff in their tiny spaces; others have very little. Most are overwhelmed.

Unfortunately the files are disappointingly small and the resolution bad, so I can't make the photos any bigger. You really will have to go take a look at his website (link is at the end).

After deciding earlier this evening that this would be my post tonight, I went for a walk with my daughter and the dog. Literally about a minute after parting ways with my daughter at Chambers and Pandora, a young Asian man stopped me, and, pointing to a map on his smart phone, asked in a fairly heavy accent for directions to a certain address on Fort Street. He explained that he "wasn't from here" (ha ha! no kidding!) and when I asked where he was from, he said "Hong Kong". We walked together for a couple of blocks and I excitedly told him about the Michael Wolf photos I had just been looking at on the Interwebs, but I'm not sure how much of that he caught (I was speaking pretty quickly). He told me that he was studying Business at UVic... he wanted to study Accounting, but UVic doesn't offer it. Maybe after his Business degree, he said. A very random and very pleasant little interaction that left me with lifted spirits somehow.

Michael Wolf's website: http://photomichaelwolf.com/#100x100/1