Billy H.C. KWOK (b. 1989, Hong Kong) is an independent photographer. With a BA degree in Media and Communication from City University of Hong Kong, Kwok began his career as a newspaper journalist before pursuing his photographic career. In his journey, images became a more intuitive and engaging medium for him to tell stories beyond syntax. His works focus on human rights in modern-day migration, and contemporary conditions deeply-rooted in power structures among Asian countries.
His work has been published on The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, Libération, The Globe and Mail, USA Today, National Post among others.
Kwok is highly observant and adaptable to cultural and environmental diversity. Apart from generating still images, he works both individually and collaboratively for multimedia storytelling.
Hong Kong was promised “50 years of changelessness”—a transformative and unique indicator for its transition. Every day since the handover, society has been infiltrated with minute changes that cannot expressed, ranging from the development of hardware, to the rise and fall of ideologies. Instead of outlining history, this work aims to document transitions in different facets of society, from singing “God Save the Queen” (the national anthem of British Hong Kong) to humming “people are slaves no more” (lyrics from the Chinese national anthem); from being old migrants to becoming new Hongkongers; and from making money as property agents to gaining power as rural landlords. This body of work is created to portray a wandering status of Hong Kong—referencing Beijing, and the ghosts of uncertainty that haunt the journey ahead.
