Q&A | How a photographer’s obsession with Hong Kong’s basketball courts led to ‘Shooting Hoops’
American photographer Austin Bell has snapped all the Hong Kong basketball courts that he could find, capturing a part of the city’s essence
I gave what I considered an unreasonably high number: “300?” The answer was 475.
By courts, we mean basketball, and Bell, a photographer from North Carolina, in the United States, recently completed a four-year project, shooting every basketball court in Hong Kong. Bell’s record day involved a 6.30am start to visit 327 locations to shoot those 475 courts. By his calculations, he shot 18 per cent of all the basketball courts in the city that day. “It was honestly not that hard,” trudging from Tuen Mun to Yuen Long, Tin Shui Wai to Sham Shui Po, all before sunset, all by MTR and bus, stopping only when he ran out of battery.
He tells me his usual court count is upwards of 100 a day, and concedes that such numbers would likely be impossible to achieve anywhere else in the world, but those of us familiar with Hong Kong get it: with one of the highest population densities in the world, life runs vertical: lifts take us to our homes, schools, restaurants and bars. Our city skyline is populated with the highest number of skyscrapers in the world. Yet Bell says Hong Kong is also likely home to the highest number of outdoor basketball courts in the world: structures that, for all intents and purposes, are undeniably flat, and there are 2,549 of them dotted throughout the city.
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Photographer on a mission to document the colourful tapestry of Hong Kong’s basketball courts
Earlier this month, Bell self-published a photo book, titled Shooting Hoops, meticulously categorised by district and featuring curated, full-bleed images of courts around the city. As he alternates between flipping through the book and furiously typing away on his computer in search of images to illustrate our conversation, three things become clear.
First, that he is possibly more adept at navigating the city than most locals; second, that this project is not for the disorganised: “This is gonna really freak you out. This is my giant spreadsheet of every single court,” he says as he pulls up a seemingly infinite Excel sheet. Third, he really, really likes basketball courts. They have become his way of exploring Hong Kong, which he says is his favourite city in the world.
“Everyone likes this place for a different reason,” says Bell. “Whether it’s going to all the MTR stations, hiking all the trails, trying all the sushi or dim sum places, Hong Kong is infinitely explorable in that way.”
