The University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong is honoured to collaborate with the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asiatic Arts in Budapest to present an exhibition and publication featuring early photographic images by Dezső Bozóky. Poised to learn more about Asia and to experience China first-hand, naval doctor Bozóky (1871–1957) travelled to the East during the first decade of the twentieth century, recorded his journey in a hitherto unpublished diary and photographed and self-developed hundreds of images that today present rare visual resources of the former colonial city and its busy and world-famous Victoria Harbour.

In an ever more developing Hong Kong, Bozóky’s beautiful black-and-white and hand-coloured pictures present historic documents that allow us to re-trace their master’s steps and offer insights into the bustling merchant town, culturally mixed society and lush natural landscape that he encountered. Bozóky’s images displayed a foreign world to his compatriots at home where they formed a treasure trove of information in early 1900s Budapest, just as they do today. We are deeply grateful to László Baán and Györgyi Fajcsák of the Ferenc Hopp Museum, as well as to Pál Kertész, Consul General of Hungary in Hong Kong and Macau, and his team, for the opportunity to exhibit Dezső Bozóky’s work.

Hand-coloured glass slide, 30cm x 30cm, 1908

Hong Kong Harbour: Queen's Building, Central waterfront, and Kowloon Ferry Pier