The central aim guiding the release of this website, and the accompanying book,
is the return of these photographs to their source community – for the images to become part of Hong Kong’s cultural heritage. Through the website and book it is hoped to achieve a layering of history, of people and place, to encourage further appreciation and research of this little-known period. 
 
Images of Hong Kong from about 1900 to the 1950s typically have a limited range of subjects. The colony’s heart was so compact that few photographers went beyond the centre; thus, there exists a large number of published views of colonial buildings and the harbour but little else. Chinese life was rarely depicted in other than posed settings. Nor did any professional photographer venture over the hills, to capture Hong Kong’s superb natural setting with its mountains and coasts.
 
Hedda Morrison’s photographs from 1946 – 47 vividly fill those gaps. Moreover,
the life of the Hong Kong of the later 1940s was little changed from that in the
late 1930s, notwithstanding the effects of the war. And because sustained economic growth came only in the mid-1950s, the broad community life of 1946
– 47 remained relatively little changed for some years. Thus, although Hedda Morrison photographed Hong Kong for only six months, her images – and this project – speak for a far longer period.
 
‘In Hong Kong people look ahead not back’ often was heard during the years
spent seeking to fund this project. ‘How are these photographs of colonial Hong Kong relevant to today or tomorrow?’ Not surprisingly, in Hong Kong so much of historic significance has been lost: impressive views obscured or obliterated; fine buildings almost all demolished; much of its heritage ignored or misconstrued.
 
For Hong Kong today these photographs have various resonances: cultural, social and, perhaps above all, physical. The website’s main texts, anchored to those six months when Hedda Morrison directed her gaze at Hong Kong, only occasionally comment on the future. Yet people, especially those who know Hong Kong well, may wonder at many of Morrison’s images: at the clarity of the distant views, with their crystal clear light; at the wide expanse of the harbour; at the translucent
coastal waters; and at the fine civic buildings. Today all those are severely compromised – or gone forever.