The Lee Ka-sing & Holly Lee Archive Library

李家昇黃楚喬文件庫網上閱讀館 The Lee Ka-sing & Holly Lee Archive Library

Great

Library Highlight

N

Reasons

to Be a

Member

1 A Library of Work and Projects by Ka-sing & Holly

The Library assembles monographs,

photographic series, literary works, and

exclusive ongoing projects by Lee Kasing

and Holly Lee. It further includes

facsimile editions of past publishing

ventures—such as DOUBLE DOUBLE,

DIGI, 秋螢詩刊 , and DISLOCATION

女那禾多 —alongside preserved

notebooks, journals, and albums.

2 Publications by Fellow Artists

Alongside Ka-sing and Holly’s work, the

Library also includes titles published by

OCEAN POUNDS, artists from the Toronto

Circle, including Tomio Nitto, Kai Chan,

Gary Michael Dault, Shelley Savor, Fiona

Smyth, and others.

3 Who the Library Is For

The Library is designed to serve

scholars, researchers, librarians,

specialists in archival studies, and longstanding

supporters of the Archive’s

practice.

4 Monthly Additions

The Library expands on a regularly basis

with new publications, archival releases,

and continuing bodies of work.

5 Members enjoy unlimited online

access to books and publications from

Ka-sing & Holly Archive and OCEAN

POUNDS, including certain ebook

titles released exclusively through this

platform.

6 Supporting the Archive & Honouring Holly Lee

Becoming a member supports the

ongoing Ka-sing & Holly Archive project.

It also honours the late Holly Lee—

co-founder of OCEAN POUNDS, ARTPOST

—whose creative presence continues to

shape the spirit and vision of the Library.

Access the Library: library.kasingholly.com / Contact: kasingholly@gmail.com

Patreon Membership subscription: patreon.com/kasingholly

Library Annual Pass: oceanpounds.com/products/annualpass

Library Highlight: oceanpounds.com/pages/highlight

library.kasingholly.com


Library Highlight #14

Lee Ka-sing: “Thirty New Stories”

Juxtaposition has long been central to Lee Ka-sing’s photographic practice. In the

1980s and 1990s, this often took the form of dense, layered images. Over the past two

decades, Ka-sing has continued to work through juxtaposition, increasingly through

diptychs and sequential images, where meaning is generated through adjacency

rather than singularity. His background as a writer plays a crucial role: titles and

textual elements do not merely describe the photographs but introduce an additional

narrative layer, opening a dialogue between visual and literary languages.

In the early 1990s, poet and critic Leung Ping-kwan wrote a long essay on Ka-sing’s

photography. In one passage, in relation to Image of Hong Kong—an exhibition

jointly organized by the Hong Kong Institute of Professional Photographers (HKIPP)

and the Hong Kong Tourist Association at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in 1991—he

discussed Ka-sing’s contribution:

“In 1991, the HKIPP and the Hong Kong Tourist Association jointly organized an

exhibition titled Image of Hong Kong at the Cultural Centre. Responding to the

organizers’ request for comparatively positive and beautiful images, Lee Ka-sing

presented a work entitled “A Hypothetical Period Between the Dragon Boat

Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival Completely Free of Pollution.” This work

made no small joke of the organizers’ requirements and of the assumptions behind

the idea of “representing” Hong Kong. Against a pictorial surface of peachpurple

and vivid red silk, Lee wrote by hand on his photograph a line of small

text: “ 在端午節到中秋節之間一段假設完全沒有污染的日子 (A Hypothetical Period

Between the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival Completely Free

of Pollution.)” Text and image here are at once fused and ironic.” — Leung Pingkwan,

“Recycling Images in the Cultural Space of Hong Kong,” 1993 (translated from the

Chinese)

Thirty New Stories, Op.53 (2018), a volume in the Library, offers a focused view of this

approach. The work emerged from Ka-sing’s long-standing annual collaboration with

Kai Chan. For their 2018 exhibition, Kai provided Ka-sing with found materials from

his basement—balls of wool string, broken wooden fragments, pieces of metal, or

elements from unfinished works—which Ka-sing used as raw elements in developing

his photographs. In parallel, Kai incorporated reproductions of Ka-sing’s earlier works

as a basis for his own new series. While their methods differ, both artists share a

sensitivity toward reuse, allowing existing materials to generate new meanings.

After completing the main photographic series, Ka-sing initiated a further body of

playful exercises, pairing some of the same found objects with photographic test

strips from his studio practice in the 1980s and 1990s. Long regarded by Ka-sing as

unique artifacts, these test strips carry their own narrative specificity. Produced in

Cibachrome, chromogenic print, and gelatin silver print—made in the facilities he

shared with Holly—these fragments now function as a visual language of their own.

Each strip reads like a monostich or a stanza, concise yet charged.

This “side” series took the form of an installation of thirty juxtapositions, each pairing

a test-strip photograph with a found

object. Installed along a corner wall

adjacent to the main gallery, with

several works presented in a showcase

table, the series functioned as both

extension and counterpoint. To each

diptych, Ka-sing added a precisely

crafted sentence—titles such as “An

Artificial Satellite Sending Messages

to a Fake Planet”, “Proposal for

Swimming Lessons for a Butterfly”, or

“The Book, Shaped Like a Fingernail,

Can Teach You How to Light Up a

Piano”. These texts introduce black

humor and a distinctly surreal register,

significantly expanding the resonance

of the images.

Here, image and text are inseparable.

Writing becomes visual, while images

are anchored by the flow of language.

Thirty New Stories ultimately unfolds

as a work about languages—their

collisions, slippages, and moments of

unexpected clarity—where meaning

emerges not from resolution, but from

juxtaposition itself.






Holly Lee: “Pictures of Friends, Artists,

and Others”

In 1978, Holly Lee left her position as a clerk and committed herself fully to

photography. Her first sustained body of personal work, Pictures of Friends, Artists,

and Others Op.1 (1981–1986), emerged shortly thereafter and marked the beginning

of her professional artistic life. For decades, this early series has continued to be

discussed and revisited, and it is widely regarded as one of her two most celebrated

works, alongside Hollian Thesaurus Op.15.

The series comprises approximately thirty portrait photographs. The Library volume

documenting Pictures of Friends, Artists, and Others brings together two distinct

bodies of photographs: ten 17 × 22 inch archival inkjet prints from the Hong Kong

Heritage Museum collection (acquired in 2012), and twenty-seven 16 × 20 inch vintage

gelatin silver prints originally exhibited in Camera Works, Holly & Wingo (1981).

Initiated in early 1981, the series was first presented in an invited group exhibition,

Women of the World. Writing in his ARTS column for the South China Morning Post on

May 27, 1981, art critic Nigel Cameron described the work as “a distinguished gallery

of women in photographic portraiture that would stand well beside the best of its kind

anywhere today… Holly Wong does brilliantly. Character looks out from those faces,

those stances, and from the way they have been captured by the photographer.” A

clipping of this review is included in the Appendix of this volume.

represents the first fully realized body of work produced at the threshold of her creative

career. Set against a plain white background—an approach she cited as being inspired

by Richard Avedon—the portraits achieve a sense of openness and stillness. The

apparent emptiness of the backdrop, almost Zen-like, allows the sitter to come forward

in full presence. Holly’s sensitivity lies not only in her compositional restraint but in

her capacity to establish trust and emotional clarity between photographer and subject.

With the passage of time, some of the sitters portrayed in Pictures of Friends, Artists,

and Others have become significant figures within Hong Kong’s cultural landscape,

including Antonio

Mak, Ann Hui, and

Chung Ling Ling.

Seen today, the

series acquires an

additional historical

resonance,

preserving

moments of

naturalness and

unguarded youth at

the outset of lives

that would later

shape the city’s

artistic and cultural

history.

Later that year, the series was expanded and featured in Camera Works, Holly &

Wingo, a two-person exhibition mounted by Holly Lee and Lee Ka-sing at the Hong

Kong Arts Centre in June 1981—her first major exhibition. In the exhibition brochure,

Holly articulated her approach to portraiture: “No one fears an eye. I try to make the

lens into an eye, so that a person can lay aside all decoration, all restraint, and speak

and laugh with ease. It is a self unseen.”

A consistent thread runs through the entire series: Holly photographed people who

were closely connected to her life. Alongside fellow artists and cultural workers, the

sitters include her grandmother and her studio assistant—individuals embedded in

her daily world. This intimacy may be key to the enduring strength of the series, which






Lee Ka-sing: “monostich — a collection of

titles drawn from my photographic work

and other attempts”

In the extended essay Not a Poet, But I Write, published a year ago, Lee Kasing

reflects on how his literary background has shaped more than four decades

of photographic practice—philosophically, technically, and through an ongoing

orchestration of fragments. From the 1980s onward, Lee gradually shifted to

photography as his primary medium of creative expression. Yet, occasionally his

works published in literary magazines such as VOICE & VERSE were basically photobased,

even as he continued to refer to them as “poems.”

Text has never entirely disappeared from Lee’s practice. At various moments, he

returned to language as a parallel mode of inquiry. One such instance appears in

MOBILE POETRY LAB. Op. 37, where Lee transcribed selected “picture poems” from

visual sequences into textual form—translating images into lines and frames into

syntax. Because these works were originally structured as sequences akin to lines of

poetry, Lee described this process explicitly as “translation.”

Recently added to the Library, monostich — a collection of titles drawn from my

photographic work and other attempts offers another entry point into the relationship

between text and image in Lee’s work. The volume gathers titles originally written

for photographs. From 2014 to the present, Lee’s DIPTYCH DIARY series has grown

to nearly 2,000 paired images, some accompanied by titles that function as reflective

surfaces for the image-pairs. Additional “monostichs” are drawn from PICTURE

HAIKU. Op. 38 and Z FICTION. Op. 26, where titles operate as overtures to visual

narratives or as components of a single extended, surreal sentence.

monostich remains an open and evolving collection, developed in parallel with the

Archive Project. New entries will be added on an ongoing basis. Emerging through

the archival process itself, the project foregrounds lines dense with imagination

and juxtaposition. Though not originally conceived as poems, these titles reveal a

reciprocal relationship with the images they accompany: the image elevates the title,

while the title distills the image into language.






“DISLOCATION (1992–1999) and Beyond”

DISLOCATION (1992–1999) and Beyond, published in 2023, is a 336-

page hardcover volume in an 8 × 10 inch format. To date, it stands as the most

comprehensive published documentation of the DISLOCATION project. While the

print edition is available through BLURB, the complete digital edition is archived and

accessible on the shelves of The Archive Library.

Between 2019 and 2021, Holly Lee wrote a series of essays titled JUNGLE

LINE, reflecting on projects she and Lee Ka-sing had undertaken over the years.

Three consecutive essays in this series, devoted to DISLOCATION, later formed

the conceptual and structural backbone of this publication. In 2023, DISLOCATION

(1992–1999) and Beyond was released as a special combined February/March print

issue of DOUBLE DOUBLE. The volume integrates an extensive range of textual and

visual materials, including a significant number of previously unseen documents and

artifacts.

At the core of the book is Holly Lee’s principal essay, “The Life of a

Publication,” presented in twenty-one segments, tracing the evolution of

DISLOCATION across three decades:

• DISLOCATION as an e-book, Volume 14

• Landscape in Flux: the missing Volume 15, Geography issue

• The second life of DISLOCATION

• Recapturing time

• Thirty years

• The unfinished: Hong Kong Streets issue

The DISLOCATION publishing project constitutes not only a critical chapter in the

development of Hong Kong contemporary photography, but also a cartography of Holly

Lee and Lee Ka-sing’s shared journey—charting their movement from literary practice

to visual work, and from artists to gallerists, organizers, and curators.

• Its early traces in Lee Ka-sing’s photography columns of the mid-1980s

• The formative role of WORKS MAGAZINE (1988–89), a studio-based

promotional publication

• The emergence of transparency and translucency as guiding ideas

(NûNaHéDuo ZERO and GLASS issues)

• The first year of publication

• NûNaHéDuo (1992–1995): 48 issues, four annuals, and an index issue

• Fair Deal: a backyard playground

• Free-wheeling and seeding

• The OP Print Program and OP Editions (1994–1999)

• The second stage (1996–1998): a shift in format

• The concept of “Three”: Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

• DIGI zine as a parallel track

• OP fotogallery and NCP — the NûNaHéDuo Centre of Photography

• Another city: OP fotogallery, Toronto (2000–2005)

• The closure of NNHD’s second stage in 1999

• Turning toward the lens: FOTO POST and e-books






Lee Ka-sing: “Essay, Editorial, Footnote,

李家昇在寫文本 Volume 2024–2025”

Recently added to the Library, Essay, Editorial, Footnote, 李家昇在寫文本

Volume 2024–2025 gathers a broad selection of writings by Lee Ka-sing from this

period. As its hybrid title suggests, the volume brings together texts in either English

or Chinese, or with some presented in abridged translation. The collection includes

personal essays—many written after Holly’s passing—as well as editorial notes

prepared for projects such as ARCHIVE and the Library Highlight section of MONDAY

ARTPOST.

Both Holly and Ka-sing began as writers and poets before turning to photography

in the late 1970s. While Holly continued to write actively across their publishing

endeavours, Ka-sing gradually shifted to using images as his primary form of

expression. Although he contributed columns to various publications, his writing

remained closely linked to visual art and photographic thought. His early literary

training continues to inform his approach to photography.

After Holly’s passing, the long-standing division between their writing and

visual roles was no longer possible. Out of necessity—and in continuity with their

shared commitments—Ka-sing resumed writing alongside ongoing publication and

archival projects. For many years, he wrote mainly in Chinese, while Holly worked

bilingually.

The texts in this volume fall broadly into two tendencies: longer, more reflective

essays in Chinese, and shorter, more direct English pieces such as weekly editorial

notes. Together, they offer insight into the collaborative history and evolving projects

of Lee Ka-sing and Holly Lee.

A key inclusion is Not a Poet, but I Write, a substantial essay presented with

an abridged translation, tracing how Ka-sing’s early grounding in poetry continues to

shape his photographic practice.

The volume also features two ongoing series: extended Chinese essays

prepared for Asia Art Archive’s Lee Ka-sing & Holly Lee Archive project, and

THOUSAND OBJECTS, a sequence of short texts responding to individual objects. The

latter remains in development, as Ka-sing considers whether to pursue it in a more

personal Chinese voice or in plain English with a neutral tone.

Access this book at the Library (members only)

https://library.kasingholly.com/2025/12/essay-editorial-footnote-volume-2024.html






J. Lynn Campbell: “Syncopation”

It is only in recent days has Ka-sing begun using the term “Toronto Circle” to describe

the constellation of artists contributing to MONDAY ARTPOST—the online publication

he and Holly created, and having exhibitions at THE 50 GLADSTONE. This informal

circle includes Tomio Nitto, Kai Chan, Gary Michael Dault, Shelley Savor, Fiona Smyth

and others. What binds them is a shared spirit of informality—an ease and openness

in both work and exchange. Over time, they have formed a close community, often

gathering at the 50 as a natural meeting ground.

Recently, Lynn Campbell joined this orbit, presenting a substantial body of new work

at THE 50 GLADSTONE in September. While connected to the circle, her practice

emerges from a distinctly different sensibility—calm, precise, rigorously sustained,

unfolding through long periods of focused labour. Her work is quietly lyrical, almost

musical in its composition.

Her exhibition, Syncopation, takes its title from the musical term meaning “an

interruption of the regular flow of rhythm.” In her artist statement, Lynn describes

using syncopation “as a pictorial metaphor to visualize how human activity has

disturbed the Earth’s natural rhythms. These disruptions are not only environmental;

they are personal, cultural, political and spiritual.”

A full catalogue accompanied the exhibition, and encountering the work in print and

in person offers two distinct experiences. The originals, with their subtle surfaces

and finely tuned material decisions, reveal details that reproduction cannot hold.

The book, however, offers another kind of coherence: the entire series gathered into

sequence, unfolding like a self-contained score—opening with an aria, followed by

cadenza and movements. On the wall, each piece asserts its individuality; in the book,

they become an orchestration.

The catalogue also includes a thoughtful reflection by Lynn on her practice. She

writes: “Over time, I have come to see art making not only as an act of shaping matter

but as an act of listening—to the quiet signals of materials.” It is a fitting insight.

Lynn approaches her work with the attentiveness of a composer—meditative, attuned,

fully aware of the rhythms she seeks to interrupt and illuminate.



Access this book at the Library (members only)

https://library.kasingholly.com/2025/10/syncopation.html

Print-on-demand edition available at BLURB (CAD $30 + shipping)

https://www.blurb.ca/b/12518613-syncopation




Lee Ka-sing: “May this freshly baked loaf

call up her old-day memories”

A sense of duration has long shaped Lee Ka-sing’s photographic practice. In 2004,

with The Language of Fruits and Vegetables—an artist-book installation presented

at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum in collaboration with Leung Ping-kwan—Lee

transformed one of Leung’s poems into a 20-minute reading experience, interwoven

with 252 photographs across a 288-page artist book. Over the past decade, he has

continued to explore time-based sequencing through multi-image works: some

concise, like three-fold haiku on a wall; others expansive, such as CODA, a symphonic

composition of more than two hundred images arranged across 480 pages.

Recently, Lee added a new in-progress work to the library: May this freshly baked

loaf call up her old-day memories. “In-progress,” in this context, means the work is

alive—growing steadily, with new frames added every four or five days, each time a

new loaf emerges from the oven. The piece unfolds like a time-lapse documentary of

tenderness and remembrance, a quiet homage to a beloved now gone.

For many years, Lee kept the ritual of bread-making, sharing each loaf with his

family, always following the same recipe held faithfully in his mind. He continues to

bake in the same familiar rhythm, but now the ritual is shared only with his daughter.

The question—May this freshly baked loaf call up her old-day memories?—echoes

inwardly. Inevitably, each loaf also summons his own memories of the passing days.

The photographs in this series are rendered in black and white. Each left page bears

a date, giving the work the cadence of a diary. The images themselves follow a

consistent approach: the same spot, the same subject, subtle shifts. Over time, as the

archive accumulates, May this freshly baked loaf call up her old-day memories will

gently settle into a melancholic, home-movie-like form—flickering a quiet narrative of

loss, performed through repetition, presence, and the persistence of the everyday.



Lee Ka-sing

“May this freshly baked loaf call up her old-day memories” Op.89 (2025)

An in-progress work series released at The Lee Ka-sing & Holly Lee Archive Library,

with new images added every four or five days.




Kai Chan / Lee Ka-sing: “SIMPLICITY”

SIMPLICITY is the sixth collaborative exhibition (2K 6.0) between Lee Ka-sing and Kai

Chan, opened last week. To accompany the exhibition, the artists produced a two-volume

artist book offering complete visual documentation of the works on view. SIMPLICITY, IN

NINE FOLDS by Kai Chan presents a suite of nine sculptural works, while Lee Ka-sing’s

SNAIL MAIL TO A MINIMALIST comprises nineteen Polaroid originals arranged in sequential

composition. Designed by Ka-sing, the publication is itself a standalone artwork, issued in

a limited edition of twenty. Copies are available exclusively at the gallery, with an online

edition accessible through the Library for Patreon members (now The Lee Ka-sing & Holly

Lee Archive Library).

Kai Chan interprets the theme of simplicity through colour and organic form, creating nine

sculptural objects that read as a quiet visual essay with a musical cadence. Both artists

share an affinity for reused and repurposed materials. For Chan, working with wood, wire,

plastic, and fragments of daily life has long been a defining practice. Ka-sing, in parallel,

draws from his studio archive of Polaroids from the 1980s to the 2000s, reanimating them

as the vocabulary of a visual poem. SNAIL MAIL TO A MINIMALIST unfolds as a surreal,

conceptual meditation composed of nineteen Polaroids. His former career as a professional

photographer informs the precision and craftsmanship of the images; his background as a

poet shapes their transformation, turning these once functional surfaces into gestures of

quiet, Zen-like resonance.






Tomio Nitto: “The Diary of Wonders”

For several decades, Tomio Nitto has worked as a successful illustrator in North

America. His weekly column in MONDAY ARTPOST reveals another side of his creative

life—sketches drawn directly from his notebooks. Eschewing the camera, his notebook

becomes his “point-and-shoot.” These sketches are warm and tranquil, filled with an

interior tenderness and an eye for subtle detail.

In 2021, Nitto presented yet another facet of his vision in an exhibition at 50

GLADSTONE. In this series, he painted—using only white—over found objects,

creating quietly transformative works. Holly Lee wrote the exhibition text for the

accompanying catalogue, 60 Wonders. For this full-scale publication, Holly and Kasing

collaborated on the caption titles for each piece, written bilingually in English

and Chinese, enriching the “wonders” with a surreal and imaginative dimension.

The resulting book became a poetic and organic journey—a diary of visual and

emotional discoveries.






Holly Lee: “Hong Kong Memories”

In 1993, Holly Lee received a grant from Fujifilm to create a new work utilizing Fujifilm

materials. Hong Kong Memories emerged from this context. Employing Fuji instant

film (similar to Polaroid) and an image transfer process, she produced a suite of

thirteen diptychs. For the first time, the transferred images were printed on HP paper

originally designed for inkjet printing.

This body of work is both image and prose — a visual writing of memory. Poetic and

deeply personal, it reflects not only Holly’s recollections of Hong Kong but also her

family: her mother, her daughter, the city itself, and her evolving sense of identity.

Over the years, the work has been exhibited multiple times, often enlarged into

large-format prints. In the summer of 2023, we presented the series once more,

displaying the original vintage transfers on HP paper. A book was produced for the

occasion, featuring all thirteen works, each accompanied by a detailed spread. The

publication also includes Holly’s newly written text Rewriting Memories (2023),

alongside Fragments (1998), written for an earlier exhibition of the series. Concluding

the volume is Holly Lee’s Hong Kong (1993), an essay by Carmen Lee, translated into

English by Sainfield Wong.

This finely produced publication stands as both a substantial and poetic presentation

of Holly Lee’s Hong Kong Memories — a work that continues to intertwine image, text,

and the intimate act of remembering.



The Lee Ka-sing & Holly Lee Archive Library

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