Ryuji Miyamoto (宮本隆司) - Kowloon Walled City (九龍城砦) - 1997

Extreme city slum life in Kowloon (Hongkong), the walled city before its demolition and during.

Ryuji Miyamoto was born in Tokyo in 1947. After graduating from the Graphic Design Department of Tama Art University, and working as an editor at architectural magazines, he began working independently as a photographer. Miyamoto has photographed, from a unique perspective, the city and its buildings as they are transformed, ruined, and revived. His works, such as “Architectural Apocalypse” (1986), in which he shot building demolition sites, and “Kowloon Walled City” (1988), in which he photographed the titular high rise slum in Hong Kong, have received critical acclaim both domestically and internationally. He is the recipient of the 55th Award of the Ministry of Education in the Art Encouragement Prizes (for his solo exhibition at Setagaya Art Museum, 2005); Golden Lion Prize of the 6th International Architecture Exhibition Venice Biennale (for the exhibition “KOBE 1995 After the Earthquake,” 1996); the 14th Kimura Ihei Memorial Photography Award (his photo-books Architectural Apocalypse and Kowloon Walled City, as well as his exhibition “Kowloon Walled City,” 1989). His works are included in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Fransico); Deutschen Centrum für Photographie (Berlin); the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Tokyo).

On January 14, 1987, the government of Hong Kong made the official announcement that Kowloon Walled City, the notorious 2.7-hectare slum on Kowloon Island, would be demolished and the land turned into a park before the sovereignty of the territory will be transferred to China. Miyamoto decided to visit Hong Kong in May of that year. He spent his first day photographing only the exterior of the Walled City. On his second day, Miyamoto hired a local guide and entered the city. Most of the photographs that Miyamoto initially published of Kowloon are made up of these alleyways, revealing perspectives and sightlines that are continually cut off by the circuitous routes that delineate the Walled City. He also photographed the conglomeration of cramped apartments, the illegal cages terraces, signboards, dentists offices and the informal networks of cables and pipes.

When Miyamoto returned to photograph Kowloon again in the fall of 1987, he paid for a helicopter to take him above the Walled City so that he could capture birds-eye-views of the fortification.
He published his first photobook on Kowloon Walled City in 1988, at Atelier Peyotl. When eventually its demolition was completed in 1994, Kowloon Walled City no longer existed as a reality. Miyamoto’s photographs continue to be an effective resource in its documentation; hence, the republication of the Kowloon Walled City photobook in 1997, 2009, and again in 2017.

The book offered here is the version from 1997 the first that contains in addition to the images taken in 1987, images taken in 1992, 1993 during the demolition.

Softback with dust cover and OBI, ISBN 4-852-27736-5, in fine condition