Kowloon Walled City—Tung Tau Tsuen Road facade 九龍城寨──東頭村道建築外牆
1987, printed 2015
Photographers Ian Lambot and Greg Girard documented Kowloon Walled City, the infamous, informal Hong Kong settlement, before its demolition in 1993. They published their work in City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City. Originally a Chinese military fort, and one of the earliest populated parts of Kowloon, the Walled City grew largely unregulated throughout both British and Japanese occupation into a series of interconnected high-rise buildings. The self-organised enclave housed over thirty-five thousand people in one square city block. Residents constructed the approximately 350 buildings with little involvement from architects, producing towers ten to fourteen storeys high and labyrinthine alleys. Although the Walled City is often remembered and romanticised as a lawless, dystopian environment—filled with gangs, gambling, brothels, opium dens, leaking pipes, and chaotic electrical wiring—it was a remarkable self-managed community, with schools, dentists, shops, temples, and factories. Undertaken over five years before the complete razing of the settlement for health and safety reasons, the photographs and oral testimonies gathered in City of Darkness provide one of the most detailed portraits of the Walled City.
This view, taken on the northern edge of the complex, depicts the ad hoc style of apartments and businesses, showing the uneven levels and density of signage. Contrary to its reputation as a squalid slum, the mishmash of signs and living quarters in the photograph show the vibrancy of life in the Walled City.