Cover A still featuring Cherie Chung and Chow Yun-fat by Greg Girard from ‘HK:PM’ (2025) (Image: courtesy of Greg Girard)
A still featuring Cherie Chung and Chow Yun-fat by Greg Girard from ‘HK:PM’ (2025) (Image: courtesy of Greg Girard)
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Canadian photographer Greg Girard, whose photographs are now displayed on the M+ Façade, reflects on three decades spent capturing Kowloon Walled City, neon signs and Hong Kong’s ever-shifting cityscape.
A “mirage” has appeared at Victoria Harbour this month. In the evening skyline—typically lit by animated billboards, futuristic buildings and water taxis performing the daily 8pm light show A Symphony of Lights—scenes from a bygone era now shimmer on the giant screen of M+ Façade: Nathan Road bathed in neon, a now-defunct Pussy Cat Club in Wan Chai, and Chow Yun-fat lighting a banknote on the set of The Eighth Happiness (1987), among others. It's as though the contemporary cityscape has been ripped open by a temporal fissure, revealing the Hong Kong of the 1970s and 1980s.
These nostalgic visuals are the work of Canadian photographer Greg Girard, who lived and worked in Hong Kong from 1982 to 1998. His iconic images are now featured in HK:PM, a cinematic sequence that runs on the M+ Façade until September 28. Returning to the city earlier this month for the film’s premiere, Girard stood atop Pano—a restaurant in West Kowloon, an area that didn’t exist when he took those photos—and looked out at a skyline transformed.
Above Screening of ‘HK:PM’ (2025) on the M+ Façade (Image: courtesy of Greg Girard and M+, Hong Kong)
Screening of ‘HK:PM’ (2025) on the M+ Façade (Image: courtesy of Greg Girard and M+, Hong Kong)
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“The city is always changing, even when I was living here,” he says. “You go away on an assignment for three weeks and come back, and your favourite café is now selling handbags. That kind of turn has always happened in Hong Kong at street level. Any place shaped by expensive real estate has a huge turnover in the texture of the city.”
His photographs freeze fleeting moments and vanishing communities, offering a window into a world that no longer exists—like the infamous Kowloon Walled City. Girard visited frequently between 1987 and 1991, before its demolition in 1993. That same year, he published the seminal City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City. Today, a serene public park stands in its place, leaving barely a trace of the black markets, cramped butcher stalls, barbershops and fishball factories that inspired the 2024 action film Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In.
Above From left: Greg Girard and Silke Schmickl, the Chanel lead curator for moving image at M+ Museum, at the launch party of ‘HK:PM’ (Photo: Instagram/@ccchoice)
From left: Greg Girard and Silke Schmickl, the Chanel lead curator for moving image at M+ Museum, at the launch party of ‘HK:PM’ (Photo: Instagram/@ccchoice)
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“It was a little odd for me to watch the movie and see scenes from my book it was based on,” he says with a chuckle. “The film crew sampled a lot of different things and source materials. It’s a kind of fantasy—an imagined version of the Walled City. I don’t think by any stretch it represents the Walled City. It taps into the myths and reputation more than the reality.”
Girard’s initial fascination was sparked by those very myths. In the 1970s, rumours painted the Walled City as a lawless zone rife with drugs, gangs, prostitution and gambling. “Pre-internet, most people knew very little about it from personal experience,” he says. “Most people knew about it because their parents told them not to go there. It had a reputation that preceded any engagement with it. Every record of the place [in newspapers] up until that point described it in these terms.”
Above A still from ‘HK:PM’ (2025) (Image: courtesy of Greg Girard)
A still from ‘HK:PM’ (2025) (Image: courtesy of Greg Girard)
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One night, while photographing near the old Kai Tak Airport, he stumbled upon it. “I went around a corner looking for an angle and saw what looked like a medieval-meets-science-fiction kind of structure. I realised it had to be the Walled City. I was astonished that it existed. Hong Kong in the 1980s was a thoroughly modern city, and this thing just didn’t fit.”
He returned often, camera in hand, and found it was far from the dystopia he’d heard about. “Yes, it’s extraordinary in the physical sense, with its anarchic, homemade quality. But it’s full of people trying to live ordinary lives, work and educate their kids,” he says. He remembers peering into flats where residents kept doors open against the summer heat, and witnessing mutual trust between vendors and buyers despite the lack of formal hygiene regulation.
Read more: ‘Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In’ exhibition brings Kowloon Walled City to life
Above An AI-generated image of Greg Girard’s memory of the stewardess in Kowloon Walled City (Image: courtesy of Bianca Tse)
An AI-generated image of Greg Girard’s memory of the stewardess in Kowloon Walled City (Image: courtesy of Bianca Tse)
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His goal was to set the record straight—without losing the intrigue. “My work is to combine those two things,” he says. Using the same lighting gear he’d use for a Time magazine shoot, he lit up interiors and residents to portray them in a “good, representative way”.
His favourite image of the city, however, was never captured—at least not on film. “There was a taxi pulling up near the Walled City where there was traffic. A Cathay Pacific stewardess got out with her luggage and went inside. I thought, this would be an amazing picture. I had no idea cabin crew lived there.” He followed her into the alleyways but never found her again. “I lost her in the alley.”
Above An AI-generated image of Greg Girard’s memory of the stewardess in Kowloon Walled City (Image: courtesy of Bianca Tse)
An AI-generated image of Greg Girard’s memory of the stewardess in Kowloon Walled City (Image: courtesy of Bianca Tse)
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Years later, Girard met AI artist Bianca Tse, who helped him recreate that long-lost moment digitally. “It’s a pretty accurate representation of what I remembered. It’s a fantastic picture. That was an exciting introduction into what AI can do. The image I had in my head is now out in the world.”
Open-minded about technology, he sees AI as a creative tool rather than a threat. “Being against it probably won’t help you deal with it,” he says.
Don’t miss: Threat or opportunity? Hong Kong AI artists evaluate their roles and chances against machine learning
A still from ‘HK:PM’ (2025) (Image: courtesy of Greg Girard)
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That said, he isn’t abandoning film anytime soon. “Film is something you develop over time and has its own look, especially for long exposures in low light. I like to think that I crafted that look somewhat to get what I want. I don’t know if film is going to go away. Until that day, I’ll continue to use it.”
The HK:PM project has also opened new doors for presenting his work. “Stringing the photos together creates a narrative, even if it’s an implied one. Seeing them as big as a billboard or projection—it’s a big departure.” He hopes passers-by might pause, caught mid-thought and feel compelled to look again. “I’m seeing these things in a new way that was never envisaged from the beginning.”
Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
