Now knowing the archives that Hedda Morrison’s photographs had been deposited in encouraged my investigations during 1996. But the results proved empty. Cornell located contact prints and negatives from a later visit by Morrison to Hong Kong.
At Harvard-Yenching Library, Raymond Lum, responsible for the Library’s photographic collections, was constrained by the large number of Hedda Morrison images, lack of resources and Morrison’s rather idiosyncratic filing system. The boxes of negatives said nothing of Hong Kong; only some prints appeared, copies of Morrison’s 1988 book reproduction prints. Of Hong Kong negatives, there were none. But the Harvard-Yenching collection, as Raymond Lum advised, had yet to
be catalogued. Thus it was impossible to be sure of its contents. Might some stray Hong Kong negatives yet exist? 
 
November 1996 changed everything, as a facsimile’s yellowing page – part of an ever-deeper file of ‘Hedda Hong Kong’ correspondence – still reveals today. ‘In reshelving some library materials’, Ray Lum wrote that month, ‘we have found
more Hedda Morrison photographs of Hong Kong, along with the negatives.’ And there was a memoir by Morrison that briefly described her experiences in Hong Kong during 1946 – 47. The original hunch had proved right. Hedda Morrison, like many photographers, had slightly erred in her filing. But, far more importantly, she had preserved her irreplaceable negatives.
 
During later research visits to Harvard-Yenching Library, in 1998 and 2000, the depth, breadth and quality of the Hedda Morrison Hong Kong collection became clearer. Over those years the concept behind this project took shape, together
with a shared commitment – in Hong Kong and at Harvard – to collaborate in publishing a book and releasing a website. The underlying intention was to return this photographic heritage to Hong Kong, its place of origin, to enrich the understanding of its past.  
 
Now a deeper layer of personal meaning had been added. For I was viewing the same images that Hedda Morrison herself had hoped to see published. Powerful remembrance of Hedda, a fellow photographer, came in handling her negatives which had only ever been seen – or touched – before by Morrison herself: fragile, yet long-lasting gelatin and emulsion squares. Each had been the momentary outcome of a gently depressed shutter, together with all the personal encounters, satisfaction and challenges that documentary photography entails. 
 
A delay of some years then occurred as the Hongkong Conservation Photography Foundation, the originator of the project, sought to fund this major work. Finally, in January 2004, with the funding at last achieved, a third visit to Harvard University and Harvard-Yenching Library was made, this time with a clear goal in sight: to catalogue and then edit the negatives. Meanwhile, Alastair Morrison had stood off
to the side in Australia, offering steady encouragement. ‘Pertinacity pays’, he liked to say, half-jokingly, when he and I met to record aspects of Hedda’s life and photography.