There’s a lot of interest and discussion at the moment about challenging and dismantling the male gaze. It was important for me to shoot them in an authentic and comfortable place, in order to make sure they were most themselves. For the portraits, we would arrange to go to their homes or meet somewhere familiar to them. Tell us about the process of getting into the intimate world of these boys?Īlexandra Leese: Getting inside their world was very organic – we would really just hang out. I feel like this has created a desire among its youth to look beyond the bubble, to be adventurous, curious and open-minded. Even though Hong Kong is a busy international city, the options available – especially to young, creative people – are very limited. They tend to have grown up aware of both eastern and western ideals, and I think this must affect their-slash-our collective mindset. With a British colonial past and a communist Chinese future, ‘Hong Kong-ers’ do feel like they have their own cultural identity.
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They are aware of the common stereotypes that Hong Kong or Asian men face, and many of them are consciously or unconsciously moving away from those ideas with a strong desire to find a unique identity and to not be defined by other people’s expectations. I can’t speak for Hong Kong men as a whole, but I observed throughout my project that this generation of young men is particularly self-aware.
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They represent a range of sexualities and backgrounds.
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What do you think that your images reveal about emerging youth culture in Hong Kong?Īlexandra Leese: The series focuses on a diversity of men within Hong Kong’s youth culture, from schoolboys to artists, and illustrators, skaters, bikers, and tattoo artists. “I was not expecting teenage schoolboys from Hong Kong to have such profound and progressive ideas about gender” – Alexandra Leese It’s way past time to counter these prejudices, and I wanted to do so in a positive way by creating and showing a set of portraits that celebrates a diversity of masculine beauty and character. They are seen as effeminate, homogenous, or “all looking the same”.
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Coming back to Hong Kong probably pushed me to ask questions that I wouldn’t have, had I always lived there.Ĭan you tell us about the preconceptions about Asian masculinity?Īlexandra Leese: Very often, in the west, Asian men are not seen as ‘‘attractive”. So I wanted to celebrate what makes Hong Kong unique and to concentrate on the positive. There were advantages and disadvantages to this, but overall, I discovered a new respect and love for a place I once took for granted. There was familiarity in the culture and an understanding of how the city works. Despite feeling like I was an outsider coming in, there was also still a sense that this was my home. Did you feel any sense of being an outsider when you returned to do this project?Īlexandra Leese: I was definitely aware while shooting this project that I no longer felt like a local, and that my time away had given me a new perspective on Hong Kong. “There is also a tendency to stereotype Chinese boys as 'all looking the same.’ I aim to show diversity within Asian masculinity and celebrate their beauty.” With Boys of Hong Kong, Leese not only reaffirms that these notions are fundamentally untrue but also illustrates just how diverse and unique these young men are.Īlongside the premiere of a film directed by Luke Casey that coincides with Leese’s just-released zine, we catch up with the photographer to talk about making Boys of Hong Kong and hanging out with the cool kids of her hometown.Īlthough you’ve spent most of your life in London, you still feel that Hong Kong is your home. “In western society, Asian men tend to be regarded as ‘less attractive’,” she says. In her new zine and film, titled Boys of Hong Kong, Leese not only depicts this new wave of less rigid gender identity among Hong Kong’s male youth culture, but also illustrates the diversities that exist amongst them by dismantling some of the misconceptions she’s encountered. “I was at a point in my life where I felt disconnected from my culture and my hometown and I had a strong desire to reconnect and rediscover what I felt I had neglected.” “This began as something very personal to me,” she says. Though she left when she was 11, the London-based fashion and portrait photographer recently felt compelled to return with her camera. Photographer Alexandra Leese has never forgotten Hong Kong the city of her childhood and the locus of cherished memories.