Swan House

for Gary and Malgorzata

Double Double Winter 3, 2019
Swan House
A two-day visit to Swan House at Napanee
Photographs by Lee Ka-sing
Words by Holly Lee
Contents based on the
Double Double electronic magazine
Issue 1220-2019 with additional materials
First edition
December, 2021
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in
Publication
Photography, Poetry
ISBN: 978-1-989845-19-6
Design by DOUBLE DOUBLE studio
Swan House
Copyright © Lee Ka-sing 2021
All Rights Reserved
Lee Ka-sing’s official website:
www.leekasing.com
For information about permission to reproduce
material from this book
write to mail@oceanpounds.com
Published by OCEAN POUNDS
50 Gladstone Avenue, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada M6J 3K6
www.oceanpounds.com

a suite of 166 photographs
taken at Swan House
from December 11 to 13, 2019
by Lee Ka-sing

G and M live in a paranoid small town where they avoid the
community and prefer the warmth, beauty and tranquility inside
their lovely Victorian home with a legion of eight cats: Orlando,
G’s favourite rescued cat, Emily (Dickinson), Teapot or Teepee, who
appears in one of his drawings, Grigio (the colour of the cat), Lew
(Lewis Carroll), Melville (Herman), Vita (Sackville-West), and Amber,
who loathes visitors and hides in the poetry room on the second floor
as long as the guests are inside the house - which by all means is a
small paradise, and from the nearby farmers market M would bring
back all sorts of Winter squash: acorn, buttercup butternut, dumpling,
hubbard, pumpkin, kabocha and spaghetti, stacking them up on the
tables in such ways that they look like pieces of art. Now the aromatic
smells of scones and coffee permeate the kitchen, suggesting that
M is preparing for today’s special cooking - a day-long feast for G’s
birthday, and as a reminder, a hand-written note is taped on the door
of the kitchen cabinet: Breakfast - banana rose-water-scented scones
with cardamon-scented coffee; Lunch - toasted bagels with cream
cheese, adding wild smoked salmon, rounds of red onion, cucumber
slices and capers; Dinner - squash gnocchi in mushroom cream
sauce, warm red cabbage salad; Desert: poached pears in spiced
pomegranate juice, and at the bottom of the paper, M also reminds
herself in red the bottle of rose wine in the refrigerator, a sparkling
wine she hand-picked to celebrate G’s 81st birthday. Deep down she
believes G’s unspoken love and admiration of every single meal she
has cooked, a blessed life together, endowed with good, healthy
food year-long, so much and so run-over that he can easily do away
with his birthday as the reason for the all-day feast, and proudly
proclaim, EVERYDAY IS A FEAST. (Holly Lee)

Lee Ka-sing, a photo-based artist grew up in Hong Kong and resides in Toronto, Canada
since 1997. He was awarded “Artist of the Year” (1989) by the Hong Kong Artists’
Guild, and the Fellowship for Artistic Development (1999) presented by Hong Kong Arts
Development Council. Selected monographs include Thirty-one Photographs, Forty Poems
- photographs 1995-98, The Language of Fruits and Vegetables, De ci de là des choses.
Lee Ka-sing’s work is in private and public institutions and museum collections such as the
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, M+ Museum and the Hong Kong Heritage
Museum.
Holly Lee is from Hong Kong, lives and works in Toronto since 1997. From the early
eighties she worked as a professional photographer and continuing a career for almost
twenty years. In Toronto she spent close to two decades managing galleries, before
retreating from gallery administration to focus on writing in 2019. She has two poetry
books published: Nine Years 九 年 (2020) and The Air is like a Butterfly (2021).