Personal Project Andrew Curry
Can you pick your favourite image from the project?
If I had to choose, I’d say that it’s the image of the two cyclists riding towards one another in the narrow rain-soaked alley (above). I took this photograph while walking back to my apartment after spending the day around town. It was the first time that I’d seen the red lanterns flanking either side of the street, which had been put up for a neighbourhood festival that day. I noticed how nicely the lanterns reflected off the wet ground, and I wanted to capture that. I took a few shots, but then noticed this woman cyclist pass me on the left, while an opposing cyclist was heading towards me. What’s it like shooting as a foreign photographer in Japan?
The positive side to being a foreign photographer is that pretty much everything will probably always be new to me. I didn’t grow up in this environment, so I see everything with a fresh pair of eyes. When my Japanese friends look at images of locations they recognise, they’ll often exclaim that they’ve walked past that particular shop or street their whole lives, and yet have never noticed anything special about it until they saw the photo I took. I’ve been living here for three years already, yet I still walk around with a sense of child-like wonder and awe. If there’s a downside, then I’d say it’s simply experiencing the other side of a double-edged sword. As a foreigner living in Japan, one tends to stick out, so it’s hard to blend in when taking photos. People are always curious about what
Exploring Hong Kong My first introduction to Hong Kong was through its marvellous cinema roughly 20 years ago, and I’ve been obsessed with the idea of it ever since. I was lucky enough to visit last May, and I was determined to shoot as many photos as I could in the five short days that I had there. I’d built the city up in my head so
much that I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I arrived. However, as soon as I boarded the train from the airport, those concerns were soon put to rest. The beauty of the city not only lived up to my expectations, it completely exceeded them. This project is my love letter to the city that ultimately inspired me to move to Asia.
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