“Erasure as a sign of protest”: Graffiti from 2019 pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong
Résumé
Sabrina Dubbeld: Hans, you are an architect but you are also a photographer. As part of this activity, you covered the "pro-democracy" protests that took place in Hong Kong in 2019. Your photographic work led to the publication of the book, Nothing to see here (fig. 1), in 2021, in which, in addition to the photographs, you wrote a very personal text about your practice, but above all about these graffiti, their erasure, their traces. Before talking about this book in detail, the circumstances of its realization and publication, can you tell us about your background: how you got started as a photographer, and more specifically as an urban photographer? H. L. Maes: Actually, I am an architect. I am from Belgium but over the last twenty years, I lived around 15 years in Asia: first in Singapore, then Hong Kong and then in Bangkok for a short time. Then I went back to Belgium more than ten years ago. I wasn't working too much as an architect, so I started photographing and showing my photos on Instagram. I don't pretend to be such a professional, but I was doing that a lot, mainly in Antwerp and its harbor. And when I returned to Hong Kong in around 2013, I started to be a bit more professional and got a proper camera. As an architect, I really like walking through the city kind of unplanned, in a "dérive" kind of way, documenting the kind of urban constellations that you don't maybe associate with Hong Kong. It's a very photogenic city but people seem to be always photographing the same things. So, I was really interested in going to places where expats and tourists would seldom go like the housing estates, the more industrial areas, and the like. I think it does have a little bit of a relation to my later interest in the graffiti because I always like to look at the backside of things or structures that are not the focus of the action. I am very intrigued by these kinds of spaces and buildings; I will do a next book about "undercrofts," the exposed foundation structures necessary for constructing apartment buildings on hillsides. For me this is very spectacular. As an architect I am interested in the unplanned urban constellations which are a result of Hong
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