TOKYO-2016 Book / Fine Art

Chai Wan Fire Station

  • Prize
    Gold in Book (Series Only)/Fine Art
  • Photographer
    Chan Dick 陳的

It all began with serendipity and curiosity. I spent six or seven years in that workshop and the ventilation shaft of the bathroom had always been shut. The scenery outside had never caught my attention until one day there was this howl out of the blue, so I went over to the window for a look. And there they were – firefighters enjoying a game of volleyball. It so happened that the bathroom window of my workshop looked right over Chai Wan Fire Station, and offered a vantage point for an omniscient view of whatever was going on down there: assemblies, washing up fire engines, pupils’ visits, volleyball games. That tiny window opened up a brand new chapter of a curious journey. At first I only peered down out of curiosity, and spent a month just prying, but the more I looked the more I was intrigued. Those frames just popped up in my head even with my eyes closed, and no longer could I bear to leave them untaken. The itch acted up, and once started, I just couldn’t bring myself to stop.

As a still-life and architectural photographer, Chan Dick's personal works often touch on social issues and everyday life discoveries. He has held 7 solo photography exhibitions to date. Of his many works, his series “Chai Wan Fire Station” earned him first prizes respectively at the Tokyo International Foto Awards in 2016, and the Hong Kong Photo Book Awards in 2015. This series was exhibited in Japan, the Netherlands and Hong Kong, and was collected by the Hong Kong Heritage Museum and Japan’s Irie Taikichi Memorial Museum of Photography Nara City.