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Ashlyn Chak

As the force behind two of Hong Kong’s most revered craft cocktail bars – Coa and The Savory Project – Jay Khan is kept busy enough with his day, or rather, night job and is perhaps one of the last people you would expect to get a side gig.
However, as a self-described “very restless person”, he got one anyway.
In March, less than six years after buying his first camera in 2020, he unveiled his first-ever photography exhibition, “Pouring Shadow”, at Sin Sin Fine Art, an independent gallery in Hong Kong’s Wong Chuk Hang neighbourhood.
Running until May 20, the aptly named exhibition shows how the award-winning bartender has transferred his creative sensibility from behind the bar to behind the lens in a showcase of 21 black-and-white photographic prints.
The 40-year-old has spent about two decades in Hong Kong’s bar scene. In 2017, he opened the Mexican-inspired bar Coa, which ranked No 1 on the Asia’s 50 Best Bars list for three consecutive years from 2021. In 2023, he co-founded The Savory Project in SoHo, which was named best new opening in the 2024 Asia’s 50 Best Bars awards.
What few people know is that his interest in photography started before he launched these popular cocktail joints. In fact, there is a sense of coming full circle between his bartending and photography.

In 2017, while he was preparing for the opening of Coa in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan neighbourhood, he visited Mexico and some of the country’s tequila and mescal makers with a photographer friend. When the pair were out drinking shots together, the photographer told him he took “pretty cool photos” and had “a good eye”.
“I don’t even know if he remembers saying that to me,” Khan says. “Back then, I was just using a cheap camera that I borrowed from somebody and didn’t even know what [having a good eye] meant. But I took it as a compliment that kind of stuck in my head.”
From 2017, he had his hands full with Coa, which has since received widespread acclaim in Hong Kong and overseas. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic hit Hong Kong and drastically affected the city’s nightlife industry. It was at this point that Khan’s passion for photography grew.
“I always like to find something to do, new stuff that’s related to creativity that keeps me busy. Our industry and what I do behind the bar are very creative-driven, so photography, to me, was a bit of a no-brainer,” he says.
Having downtime during Covid also prompted Khan to start regularly running and hiking. He would take his camera on these excursions, taking snaps of the many different sides of the city, from its concrete jungle to vast areas of lush nature.
Morning Walk and Family Fishing in Lei Yue Mun are two photos from these trips that feature in “Pouring Shadow”.

The former is a large photographic print of an ancient Indian rubber tree “with a bit of light coming through”, Khan says. He took the photo in 2022, at around 6am, during a misty early-morning hike to The Peak. The latter, taken in 2024, is Khan’s personal favourite.
“It’s not the most striking photo when you look at it, but I think the photo has a lot of layers – it’s a silhouette, almost around sunset, of a family. When you look closely, you get the starburst, the skyline behind, the boat in between; there’s a lot in the frame,” he says.

Steps to Serenity, another photograph featured in the exhibition, is a minimalist portrait of urban Hong Kong. It was shot in Tai Kwun, a heritage building in the heart of the city, in 2022, and features an enclosed space with ceiling lights that draw the eye down to an opening as a lone chef walks past.
Most photographers and tourists aim their lenses at Hong Kong’s neon lights, skyscrapers, and hustle and bustle. But Khan instead finds the seemingly ordinary and candid moments of everyday life infinitely more interesting.
“People always take photos of the chaotic energy of Hong Kong, which is great, but I feel like that’s been done so many times. It’s not something that I would go for. I want to capture fleeting moments that feel a little bit quieter,” he says.
“Everybody sees in a different way. I think photography is a way to express how you see the world and how you see the city that you live in.”

As for how he sees the world, Khan says he is colour-blind. Perhaps that contributes to his affinity with the late Hong Kong Chinese photographer Fan Ho, whose black-and-white works of dynamic contrast have long impressed Khan, even before he picked up photography.
While he counts Ho as one of his earliest and main inspirations, Khan has found some unexpected parallels between photography and mixology. Both are subjective forms of creativity, but regarding the theory of what makes something good, it is all about “contrast, balance, layers and the composition”.
He elaborates: “They actually carry quite a lot of similarities in concept. Most of the drinks that I make are quite punchy with lots of contrast and layers, and the [kind of] photography that I do is similar – very bold, very rich, very contrasty.
“I think naturally, because of the way I make drinks, it’s the way I take photos. It’s also the way I live, the way I am.”
“Jay Khan: Pouring Shadow – Contrast & Balance” at Sin Sin Fine Art, Unit A, 4/F, Kin Teck Industrial Building, 26 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang. By appointment only, Monday to Friday 9.30am to 6pm; Saturday 12pm to 6pm. Until May 20. For more information, visit sinsinfineart.com


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Morning Walk (2022) by Jay Khan. Photo: Jay Khan and Sin Sin Fine Art

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Jay Khan of Coa and The Savory Project compares mixology and photography as his first photography exhibition opens at Sin Sin Fine Art


Jay Khan of Coa and The Savory Project compares mixology and photography as his first photography exhibition opens at Sin Sin Fine Art.


Hong Kong bar maestro Jay Khan swaps cocktails for cameras for his first photo exhibition

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Jay Khan of Coa and The Savory Project compares mixology and photography as his first photography exhibition opens at Sin Sin Fine Art

Jay Khan of Coa and The Savory Project compares mixology and photography as his first photography exhibition opens at Sin Sin Fine Art