Photos of old Hong Kong
Here we bring together photos of old Hong Kong that are hosted on this site, together with links to other collections.
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Do you have any old photos of Tsim Sha Tsui? To build a digital model of the old KCR Terminus in TST, we need as many photos of it as possible - basically any photos from the 1920s-70s that show the station buildings will help. If you have any you are willing to contribute, please contact me. Thanks for your help, David |
You can search the photos here in two different ways:
- Photo map page. Use this interactive map of Hong Kong to choose the area you are interested in, and see what photos we have that show that area.
- Galleries. Here you'll find photos grouped by decade, from the 1860s to the present day.
All the photos have been kindly contributed by readers. If you have any that you would like to add, please email me so we can work out the easiest way to receive them.
Other websites with good photos of old Hong Kong include:
- The Hong Kong Public Records Office offers an online catalogue to their 'Archives for Still and Moving Images'. There are over 8,000 images in the archive.
- The Hong Kong Public Library also has a good online search for old photos. The photos can be viewed and downloaded in high-resolution (though with the library's logo on the picture), which means they can be cleaned up well in an image editor. [3-Oct-2008: For me this site only works with Internet Explorer, not Firefox. When you click the link you should see a search screen. If you don't, check the opening hours as the service closes at different times for maintenance.]
- Several of John Thomson's photos from the 1860s and 1870s are of Hong Kong
- The Hedda Morrison website has well over 100 photos taken in 1946-7, and each photo has an interesting snippet of history attached. Excellent.
- Harry Marshall has several photos of Hong Kong in the 1950s (click on the thumbnails along the right for a larger version of the picture and background information). His introduction begins:
During the British National Service years I was stationed in Hong Kong from 1954 to 1957. Initially I was one of the R.E.M.E. personnel attached to the 27th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment at Stanley Fort on Hong Kong Island. Then followed a short period on Stone Cutters Island before I was finally transferred to the R.E.M.E. workshop in Shamshuipo. Repatriation came in July 1957, and I was sorry to leave. Hong Kong I mean, not the Army! I couldn't wait to get out of the bxxxxy Army! — But I had fallen in love with Hong Kong.
- The St Georges School website has a gallery of photos of Kowloon believed taken in the 1960s.
- Tom Jackson's 'Hong Kong 70s & 80s'. He writes:
I was brought up in Hong Kong in the 60s and went to the Peak School and KGV. These photos were mostly taken by myself on a Kodak Instamatic and Olympus OM10 between 1969 and 1987. A few other photos were given to me and some slides were bought from a street vendor in the late 70s. I hope you enjoy this bit of nostalgia as much as I did compiling it.
If you know of any other sites with good photos of old Hong Kong, please add a comment below with the details.
David
Comments
BWG has a collection of
BWG has a collection of pictures:
http://www.bigwhiteguy.com/photos/
Some more photos
Mostly from the 1980s and 1990s, but some older shots too:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hkpa/scenic/by-year/en/1846_1955.html
MrB
1950s photos
Excellent B&W photos by Fan Ho. Thanks to Moddsey for the tip.
MrB
Photos from 1950 - present
The Yesterday Hong Kong site has good quality photos from that period for sale, and gives thumbnails and a brief description for most of the photos. Thanks to Moddsey for the link.
MrB
1979 photos
Reader Fred has kindly sent in a set of Hong Kong photos from 1979. Here's a link to the first photo, then just keep clicking the 'next image' link to see the rest.
MrB
New old photos
Several more received by email and added to the galleries for the 1920s, 30s, and 50s.
MrB
1946 Funeral Procession
Reader Geoffrey has sent in some interesting family photos, together with some background information. He's also asked for help in identifying some of the locations, and what's going on in the photos.
There are six photos, so use the "next image" link to see the next photo, and use the "original" link if you want to see a larger version of the image.
Many thanks to Geoffrey for sharing these, and now on to the first photo...
MrB
A second set of photos from Geoffrey
Reader Geoffrey has sent in another set of family photos:
I've set the date to 1940 for each of the photos, but if you believe the date should be earlier or later, please leave a comment on the photo. I hope you can help identify their loction too - though bear in mind that they may not all have been taken in Hong Kong.
You can click the "next image" link to see the next photo in the series, and click the "original" link if you want to see a larger version of the image. Here is the first photo.
Thanks again to Geoffrey for sharing his photos.
MrB
1966 photos
A very colourful set of photos from Tom Briggs.
MrB
1960s photos
Reader Fiona has forwarded a good set of 15 photos from the 1960s. Here's the first photo, then click "Next image" to move through the set.
Many thanks to Fiona for sending them over.
MrB
Films of Hong Kong in the 1950s
Rarer than photos, but all the more enjoyable for that. Received by email:
Old pictures by the Royal Military Police
This site has old Hong Kong pictures taken by the Royal Military Police.
http://www.redcap70.net/
Cheers,
Isdl
Fred Evans' photos of Hong Kong in the 1950s
Over the last few weeks I've posted up over 200 photos taken in the late 1950s. Where did they all come from?
As the title for the album says, they are “Fred Evans' photos”. Fred is a family friend, who lives a few houses down the hill from my mum. She heads along there every week for Sunday lunch with him and his wife. One time he mentioned that he'd been out in Hong Kong with the army, and had some photos. The message was duly passed on to me, and so when I visited mum last year, we arranged for a time to go and see Fred and his photos.
I only expected to see a handful of photos, but instead out came an album. Fred had been a keen amateur photographer, and had taken several hundred photos while he was in Hong Kong. Of course most are of his army life, but there are also plenty of photos of the countryside, local people, and visits into the city.
He arrived in June 1957, stationed in Hong Kong with the 1st Royal Tank Regiment. He was based at Sek Kong throughout, sailing home again in October 1959.
As he talked me through the album I took photos of his photos with my digital camera. You'll see that some came out better than others – when they look blurry it's my shaky hand that's the cause, not Fred's! I also tried using MrsB's MP3 player to record Fred talking, except that ran out of battery half way through without me noticing...
But there should be a second chance, as I'll be visiting the UK again in February 2008. So if you have any questions for Fred, or requests for better copies of any of the photos, please let me know in the comments.
Readers Moddsey, Raymond and Oldtimer have already done a great job of filling in the background information about what you can see in many of the photos. I hope you'll add further comments if you have any memories or information to share. I also hope to persuade Fred to get connected to the internet, so we can hear from him directly.
I hope you enjoy the photos.
Regards, MrB
HKU Museum
The Univerity of Hong Kong's Museum & Art gallery occasionally run free exhibitions of old photos. They currently have an exhibition entitled "Early Hong Kong's Kowloon Peninsula", which runs until 16 Mar 2008. I went along this morning, and enjoyed it. The photos cover the late 1800's up til the 1960's, and include many of the areas we've looked at in photos here.
MrB
PS Raymond, several of Kowloon's old cinemas are shown, so you may be interested in visiting.
More old photos
This thread on the local Discuss website has pages and pages of old photos. Some are displayed from the local governmnet websites, but there are also many others.
Early 20th C. photos of the Grandel family in Hong Kong
We received this by email, linking to some good photos:
Photo Exhibition
Mind if I ask which cinemas were shown?
Photo Exhibition
Sorry, I remember seeing cinemas, but not sure which ones. Now if there had been photos of ARP tunnels ... ;)
MrB
1939 colour films
A series of short colour clips taken in Hong Kong in 1939.
Hong Kong 1949-60
Thanks for your favourable comments.Always glad to see these old films get a new life.
B&W photos of Hong Kong, 1900-1940
The 'Historical Photographs of China' site has a large collection of photographs, including many from the G. Warren Swire collection. Many of his photos are work-related, documenting Butterfield & Swire's operations around China. So expect lots of photos of ships and dockyards, but there are some interesting photos of general Hong Kong scenes too.
The other collections at that site also include a few photos of Hong Kong, so I found the easiest way to see all the Hong Kong photos is:
- Click 'All images' from the Collections menu on the left
- In the top-right grey section,
Set Nb/p to 100
Type Hong Kong in the first 'Text Search' field
Tab to the next field and change 'In all fields' to 'Title'
- Click ok
It returned 321 photographs, displayed in pages of 100.
MrB
1904 panorama of Hong Kong
Some great detail on this photo.
Hedda Morrison - a more complete set
If you enjoyed the Hedda Morrison collection mentioned above, here's a way to see more photos, and to see more detail of each photo.
Harvard University's VIA system gives access to over 350 of Hedda Morrison's photos of Hong Kong. VIA's viewer also allows you to zoom in to see a much higher level of detail.
To see the photos:
hedda morrison hong kong
You should see "Search results: 1 to 15 of 365 hits from the search hedda morrison hong kong in (Anywhere)"
NB if you want to give someone a link to one of these photos, don't just use the url in your browser when you're viewing the photo. When you try to view it later, you'll just see an error. Instead you need to double-click the thumbnail to see the full recrod, then look for the link 'Bookmark this item'. That's the link you can share that will work reliably in future.
MrB
Hong Kong photos, 1945
This webshots album has a great selection of photos taken around the end of the war in Hong Kong in 1945:
WWII Liberation of Hong Kong, End of World War 2, Japan surrendered, August 15, 1945
Several of those photos come from the HMS Nabcatcher photo archive, as referenced by Moddsey.
old hong kong photos
you may wonder why I have not been back in touch , having promised you some more photos from the 1950s and early 60s.
It is because I cant find the things!
They were taken by my father, who now has altzheimers (in his 90th year now) and is now in a home.
My stepmother thought she had found them, but it turned out not to be, so they are still missing.
As she lives in Bognor. and I live in Bovey Tracey, we dont see each other very often.
It doesnt help that I am disabled.
My Dad had about 60+ boxes of 35mm film, that show things like the old car ferry(the only way to cross in those days).
I will attemot to find them again soon.
We lived there from 1948-1964. I still miss it.
Greg
re: old hong kong photos
Hi Greg,
Thanks for the update. I understand the difficulties involved, so don't worry if they can't be found. But we'll keep our fingers crossed that the photos surface at some point - sounds like there are some great photos there.
Regards, MrB
facebook - if you don't have
facebook - if you don't have an account - get one and join the group:
I grew up in Hong Kong in the 1970s/80s
a great resource for old HK photos, especially from the 70s and 80s, as well as video footage (including a colour tram ride through HK from 1965) and a collection of 80s TV adverts
facebook?
Don't keep us in suspense - what's the name of the group to join?
sorry I mentioned it but
sorry I mentioned it but wasn't clear - it's called "I grew up in Hong Kong in the 1970s/80s"
Search groups for Hong Kong and that will come up... anyone can join
facebook
Aha! Just had a look, and you're right there are some good photos there. The old tram-ride video is well worth a watch too.
If you're already logged in to facebook, here are links to the photos, videos, and the group.