15 Nov Hong Kong Barricades
Lele Saveri
In October 2014, Lele Saveri was invited to spend a month teaching in China. On his way to take up the post, he made a stop in Hong Kong, where just a few days earlier, one of the first in a series of civil movements had erupted – movements that rocked the status quo in Hong Kong and brought relations between Hong Kong and Beijing into international focus. Saveri spent the whole of his time in Hong Kong documenting this pivotal moment, now known as the Umbrella Revolution. He walked the streets day and night, talking to protestors and taking picture after picture. Collected here are his photographs: of protestors – in masks and helmets, superhero costumes or t-shirts emblazoned with ‚God Save The Queen‘ – of the weird misshapen barricades that began to take over the city’s infrastructure, of tourists and citizens just going about their daily business. Presented alongside a short essay by Hong Kong activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Joshua Wong, this slim volume of striking photographs provides an essential, sometimes disturbing, sometimes alienating document of the beginnings of one of the most important protest movements in modern history – a document made only more powerful in hindsight, as the Hong Kong protests have continued, in the face of ever more brutal retaliation, to demand essential reform of their democratic and human rights.