From September 11, 2026, to January 10, 2027, Palazzo Falletti in Barolo, Turin, will host “FAN HO: The Master of Hong Kong Photography,” a retrospective dedicated to Fan Ho (1931–2016), one of the leading figures in Chinese street photography. Produced and organized by Ares in collaboration with the Blue Lotus Gallery in Hong Kong, the exhibition is curated by Elisa Maupas and Sarah Van Ingelgom and brings together one hundred photographs, mostly in black and white, that trace the artist’s career and his depiction of urban life in the metropolis.
Fan Ho’s work strikes a balance between realism and abstraction. Porters, street vendors, and children playing in the streets are recurring figures in his images, through which the photographer observes the toil and resilience of the city’s inhabitants, rather than merely documenting the city’s years of transformation. The crowded streets and alleys thus become meditative scenes, often populated by solitary figures. “Each photo offers a small window through which one can see and feel what the photographer saw and felt,” Fan Ho stated, emphasizing the relationship between artistic exploration and sensitivity toward his subjects.
On a formal level, the artist applied principles of pictorial composition to photography, with particular attention to geometric synthesis. Architectural elements were organized into structures capable of transforming the urban scene into an abstract composition. Backlighting and chiaroscuro, on the other hand, helped convey the atmosphere of the streets, bringing out white outlines and dark silhouettes from the half-light. The construction of the image continued in the darkroom through what Fan Ho called “second-hand composition.” Cropping the negative, retouching, and adjusting tones allowed her to eliminate superfluous elements, strengthen lines and volumes, and accentuate the enigmatic character of the photographs. This approach, according to the artist, linked photography and cinema—fields to which she would devote a long career.
Works such as *Pattern* and *A Play of Light and Shadow* highlight the relationship between vertical and horizontal lines, while *Different Directions* transforms the street through the manipulation of light. In *Controversy*, people become silhouettes immersed in a composition dominated by dark tones and the geometry of the train tracks. Also featured are *Approaching Shadow* and *Street Scene*, among Fan Ho’s best-known images and a synthesis of her formal and aesthetic exploration. The exhibition project is complemented by a catalog published by Dario Cimorelli Editore.
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| An exhibition by photographer Fan Ho in Turin: 100 images depict urban Hong Kong |
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