appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

hooksArticlePageFloatingButtonConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

Kylie Knott

Hongkonger Thomas Chan initially saw photography as a way to preserve the memories of his travels. For the avid explorer, photos became a visual diary. But he wanted to delve deeper into his craft.
“I wanted to challenge myself and be creative in my journey, and turn passive sightseeing into active creation,” he says.
As part of this challenge, he headed to Iraq in March to engage in what he calls a photographic experiment “in which one stranger relies on another stranger to understand a strange place”.
Each morning, Chan asked a random taxi driver to take him to a place they themselves wanted to go. The requests took him on journeys to unknown destinations.

The 28-year-old was on a mission to experience chance encounters – and he found them from the start.
“On my first day in Iraq, a taxi driver named Ali took me to the burial place of his entire family who died during the Iraq war,” Chan says, referring to the conflict between a US-led coalition and the Iraqi government from 2003 to 2011.
The destination was Wadi-us-Salaam. Spanning 600 hectares (1,485 acres) and containing an estimated 10 million graves, the cemetery in the holy city of Najaf is believed to be the world’s largest.
“Ali did not head there for a tour, but to kneel and pray at the graves of his family, a quiet ritual amid an endless sea of tombstones,” Chan says.

The encounters piqued the taxi drivers’ curiosity and, at times, left them bewildered.
Photos from Chan’s trip to Iraq are now on show at his first solo exhibition, “Stranger on Stranger”, at Wontonmeen, a hostel and creative hub in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po neighbourhood, from November 20 to December 5.
The exhibition focuses on the connections between images, travel and humanity through chance encounters with strangers.
“Unlike a painting, where one canvas takes days to complete, I could fire off 2,000 shots a day, capturing different aspects of the people I met, and the culture I was learning about. I had all these chance encounters that I never imagined,” says Chan, who returned to Hong Kong with more than 10,000 photos taken over eight days in Iraq.

The impressive collection is more than just a cross-cultural visual journey. It is an artistic dialogue about trust, curiosity and authenticity, with both parties gaining something from the random and fleeting encounters.
Chan got to peel back the layers of the subjects he photographed, revealing family memories, ancient ways of life, people’s coexistence with deadly landmines and his subjects’ sense of identity.
In one image, titled Playground, Chan captures the ruinous impact of war.
“On the crumbling wall of a ruined building, a faded mural depicted a girl clutching her teddy bear, encircled by scattered bombs – a stark reminder that this had once been a playground, now shattered and forsaken,” Chan says of the scene in the photo.

In Innocence, Chan captures the warmth of the Iraqi people. “One day, I met a boy with a bright smile who led me to the animal enclosure in his family’s courtyard and invited me to share a cup of tea,” he says.
Chan also turned his lens on the dangers of war that continue to lurk. It is estimated that Iraq has about 25 million unexploded landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERW), making it one of the world’s most landmine-affected countries. Chan explores this in his photo, Mines.
“Unwittingly, I wandered into a minefield, only realising it when I spotted a broken toy and the red bricks that marked it as off-limits.”
For Chan, life captured through a lens is a way of actively engaging with the world. He found people in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, “remarkably camera-friendly” and happy to chat, unlike his experiences growing up.
“In Hong Kong, people grow up in a culture where they are not used to talking to strangers,” says Chan, whose “day job” is a tech entrepreneur.

As well as offering an exploration of Iraqi culture, history and everyday life, the photos reflect how an outsider can gain an understanding of, and forge a connection with, an unfamiliar society through photography.
The exhibition’s curator, Hong Kong artist Kasper Forest, says each frame in the exhibition captures the chemistry between the photographer and strangers – and viewers are invited to step into this visual ritual, to rediscover forgotten humanity and emotions.
Forest adds that in an age of AI-generated images, Chan’s photos are more important than ever.
“We need those cumbersome, ritualistic creative methods even more to reclaim our dominion over the real world,” he says, adding that Chan’s work does not rely on algorithms but instead generates truly warm images through the collisions between people.

According to Forest, Chan’s photography also challenges conventional tourism and creative frameworks, redefining the relationship between travel and art by transforming it into a process of cultural dialogue and self-discovery.
Chan says he plans to continue making connections through photography – and is again visiting offbeat places to make them.
For his latest project, he is focusing on the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Stranger on Stranger” is once again the driving theme.
“Right now I am in Palestine [in the West Bank], again having a chance encounter with a taxi driver who introduced me to a local artist who painted graffiti on the separation wall with Israel,” Chan says.
“Entering the West Bank is easy for a foreigner; generally, there’s no border check if the visitor is not a Palestinian. But there are rigorous checks when I leave the West Bank.
“Arabs in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, despite being just a few kilometres apart, are living vastly different lives.
“I wanted to continue Stranger on Stranger on Israel and Palestine, to explore stories on a human level – not just on the differences, but also on the similarities, which the media often neglects.”
“Stranger on Stranger”, Wontonmeen, 135 Lai Chi Kok Road, Hong Kong, November 20-December 5. Opening hours: 2pm-8pm (Tuesday to Sunday). Free admission.


German artist Anne Imhof on love, LGBTQ visibility and control ahead of her Hong Kong show

What new analysis of Joshua Reynolds’ masterpiece The Portrait of Mai tells us

Taiwan vs South Korean art biennale: inside the fierce political row over pavilion name

The 357-year-old Buddhist text in Taiwan said to bring lifetimes of luck with one glimpse

Photos of Iraq by Hong Kong photographer explore war and humanity via chance encounters

Innocence, by Thomas Chan, features a boy with a bright smile who “led me to the animal enclosure in his family’s courtyard and invited me to share a cup of tea”. It is one of the photos that forms his exhibition at Wontonmeen in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong. Photo: Thomas Chan

Sizing My Next Driver, by Thomas Chan, is one of the photos featured at Chan’s exhibition “Stranger on Stranger” at Wontonmeen in Sham Shui Po. Photo: Thomas Chan

Chan’s photo The Memorial shows a section of Wadi-us-Salaam, believed to be the biggest cemetery on Earth. Photo: Thomas Chan

Chan at the Wadi-us-Salaam cemetery in Najaf, Iraq. Photo: Instagram/explore.tcst

Playground, by Chan. Photo: Thomas Chan

Mines, by Chan. Photo: Thomas Chan 

Friendly Gaze, by Chan. Photo: Thomas Chan 

New Hong Kong fringe festival Horizons challenges established arts events

Caro Chan’s performance, titled Òyìnbó, will explore her multicultural background and road to self-discovery.

(From left) Chan Kwun-fee, a member of Horizons Festival’s curatorial panel; Amy Sze, one of the festival’s lead organisers; Caro Chan, a Nigerian-Chinese actress taking part in the festival; and William Wong, artistic director of co-organiser Blank Space Studio, pose for a photo at Hong Kong’s Tai Po Arts Centre, where the new fringe festival will be held in November. Photo: Edmond So

A poster for the Horizons Festival, which positions itself as a bold new platform on Hong Kong’s cultural calendar, championing artistic innovation and accessibility. Photo: Horizons Festival

Caro Chan’s performance, Oyinbo, will explore her multicultural background and road to self-discovery. Photo: Horizons Festival

(Clockwise from bottom) Chan Kwun-fee, a member of Horizons Festival’s curatorial panel; Amy Sze, one of the festival’s lead organisers; Caro Chan, a Nigerian-Chinese actress taking part in the festival; and William Wong, artistic director of co-organiser Blank Space Studio, pose for a photo at Hong Kong’s Tai Po Arts Centre. Photo: Edmond So

Angelica Lee Sinje evokes the ‘liberating happiness’ of childhood in her Hong Kong art show

Angelica Lee Sinje stands before some of her paintings featured in Childtopia, her first Hong Kong solo exhibition, at 13a New Street Art Gallery in Sheung Wan. Photo: 13A New Street Art Gallery

Angelica Lee Sinje (right) and Shu Qi in a still from The Resurrected. Photo: Netflix

A promotional poster for Childtopia, Lee’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. Photo: 13A New Street Art Gallery

Lee’s painting Rice Cake is featured at the exhibition. Photo: 13A New Street Art Gallery

A sea exhibition in Hong Kong explores our relationship with the ocean, a ‘complex entity’

Seafood is a bamboo-and-paper sculpture by Hong Kong artist Louis To Wun featured at the All-Sea: Eight Oceanic Artistic Practices from Southeast Asia and Hong Kong exhibition at Karin Weber Gallery in Hong Kong. Photo: Kylie Knott



Louis To Wun’s Seafood, featured in an exhibition at the Karin Weber Gallery in Hong Kong. Photo: Karin Weber

The exhibition’s curator Caroline Ha Thuc. Photo: Instagram/karinweber_gallery

Faris Ridzwan’s Ovular Secret. Photo: Karin Weber

Joar Songcuya’s The Sailor and the Prophesier. Photo: Karin Weber

Ari Bayuaji’s Diving Under Sunset Light. Photo: Karin Weber

How China’s Song dynasty was a great time for the nation but a terrible one for many women

Grand Marshal Zhao Kuangyin is proclaimed Emperor of the Song Dynasty on the battlefield after the Chenqiao mutiny in 960 in an illustration from Hutchinson’s History of the Nations, published in 1915. The coup saw Zhao become leader of one of China’s most prosperous dynasties. Photo: Universal Images Group via Getty Images

A portrait of Taizu, the first emperor of the Song dynasty. Photo: Historical Painting

Early Spring, a hanging scroll painting by Guo Xi in 1072, is an example of shanshui landscape painting. Photo: De Agostini via Getty Images

Su Shi, often referred to as Su Dongpo, was a talented writer who wrote more than 340 ci poems. Photo: Getty Images

Longquan celadon is a type of Chinese ceramic sometimes called greenware. Photo: Shutterstock

A reproduction of Song dynasty paper money. Illustration: SCMP

Zhou Guizhen, 86, shows one of her bound feet, where the bones in the four small toes were broken and forced underneath the foot over a period of time, at her home in Liuyi village, in China’s Yunnan province, in 2007. Photo: AFP

Lifestyle

Arts

The result of trips to unknown destinations, Thomas Chan’s photos in his Hong Kong exhibition are a study in trust, war and identity


The result of trips to unknown destinations, Thomas Chan’s photos in his Hong Kong exhibition are a study in trust, war and identity.


Photos of Iraq by Hong Kong photographer explore war and humanity via chance encounters

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The result of trips to unknown destinations, Thomas Chan’s photos in his Hong Kong exhibition are a study in trust, war and identity

The result of trips to unknown destinations, Thomas Chan’s photos in his Hong Kong exhibition are a study in trust, war and identity