Photographer puts the focus on HK’s cats
Print Edition
CATS, a feature in many shops across Hong Kong as they keep a nonchalant eye on the world passing by, are the inspiration behind a new book by Dutch photographer Marcel Heijnen.
His images from some of the city’s most traditional neighborhoods show cats of all shapes and colors: masters of their domain whether on sacks of goods, on counters, or blending into window displays.
“Well, they’re very chilled. They’re very zen. They see people coming in and out every day, they have trucks unloading, people walk around with boxes, they’re very unfazed, they sit on top of everything,” Heijnen said.
The most famous is Cream Brother, with nearly 200,000 followers on Facebook.
He is behind several books, has starred in advertising campaigns and has his own “Cream Bro” foundation that helps less fortunate felines. Now semi-retired — his shop closed earlier this year — he still has regular visitors.
“I think he is a very special cat, very handsome, very cute,” said Solid Ng, a bank teller who visits him twice a week at home.
Such fame was unexpected, said owner Ko Chee-shing, but it’s a life that came naturally to the former convenience store cat.
“His character is really like a star. He would sit down and let you photograph him. Everyday there were hundreds of people coming to our store to take photos of him, he would stand up and pull a cute face, or just sleep and let people take pictures of him.”
Heijnen said his photographs point to a nostalgic pause in a constantly changing city.
“I think the uniqueness in the photographs is that it captures the background,” he said, while a favorite subject sat on boxes piled on goods in the background. “So it’s not just about cats, it’s about the stores and in many of my photos you see that 90 percent of it is the store and the cat is very small. And these are very traditional stores, they’re very timeless. These photos could have been taken in the 60s.”
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