I've been there so many times that I have always felt that Hong Kong is my second home. And the love I feel about HK sometimes makes me believe that I had lived there all my life before I was born.
Knowing this crazy obsession of mine, my friend showed me a picture shot in HK.
I was fascinated, by how such a picture, small as it is, strikes me almost like a blast of smell of the city and drastically surrounds me with its noise bustling and hustling. The busyness of the city is in front of my eyes.
HK is maybe too colorful to be described by any camera. The black and white color choice seems like a slowed time, playing every movement in slow motion, gracefully corresponding to the body posture of the model. She is in the center of the picture, stretching herself in a grotesque but elegant way, generously absorbing everyone's attention. She and her couture fit in the space quite oddly, but with unruly allure. Great contrast is created in the picture as it is so hard to define if it is new or old, just like the city itself.
It is taken by Baldovino Barani, a fashion photographer.
Barani has been taking photos for fashion magazines like Vogue. He enjoys playing with colors. His fashion work contains a lot of stunning visual contrast, refined composition, models with an attitude casual, natural and unrestrained. He is good at setting an environment that is magical, abundant, delicate and colorful. Of course, clothes is the important part. It always stand out in his pictures in bright colors, distinctive and unique.
But this Hong Kong series taken for Prive Asia magazine named "the Evangelist" is something richer than just a contrast of colors, a feast of vision, or simply anything like luxury. He is not satisfied with simply what viewers see, but how they feel. There is something transpired from within the composition, lighting, color, emotion of the model, and the stories told in the pictures that convey an unspoken attitude of the city Hong Kong: a place where the old meets the new, eastern collides with western, the couture goes on the street and the tattered proposes its glamor.
Barani really captures the essence of Hong Kong.
Other works done by Barani.
