Research guides: Resources Guide to Hong Kong Studies: Find Visual Materials about HK

Online Images

Hong Kong Image Database
The Hong Kong Image Database is a digital collection of historical images documenting the Hong Kong experience from the 1840s through to the 1990s. The Database features a wealth of images of Hong Kong, including people, landscapes, infrastructures, villages, agriculture and fisheries activities, industrial settings, housing, buildings, panoramas, and more. The University of Hong Kong Libraries unlocks this digital vault of historic images with rich metadata and makes them freely available for public consultation.
History in Pictures
The website, created by the Public Records Office (PRO) of Hong Kong, provides a carefully selection of images illustrating the history of Hong Kong.
Illustrations of China and Its People: A Series of Two Hundred Photographs, with Letterpress Descriptive of the Places and People Represented - section on Hong Kong
Collected in the World Digital Library.
John Thomson (1837-1921) was the first known photographer to document the people and landscape of China for publication and dissemination to the Western world. Between 1868 and 1872, he traveled over 6,500 kilometers with his camera, equipment, and darkroom, capturing all aspects of Chinese life. The photographs in these four volumes show the many sides of China: sweeping landscapes, royalty and ruling classes, merchants and economic activity, everyday life, and the faces of men, women, and children.
Historical Photographs of China 1870-1950 - Hong Kong images
This project results from a collaboration between scholars at the University of Bristol, University of Lincoln, the Institut d'Asie Orientale and TGE-Adonis. It aims to locate, archive, and disseminate photographs from the substantial holdings of images of modern China held mostly in private hands overseas.

Type "Hong Kong" in the search box to find images about Hong Kong.
Gwulo: Old Hong Kong
An online repository for all things historical in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong Photo Collection
Digital collection provided by the Hong Kong Public Libraries. The precious old photos collection records the scenes of old Hong Kong, revealing the development and changes of the city in different eras.
Luke Him Sau Architectural Collection This collection mainly consists of architectural drawings created by Hong Kong architect Mr. Luke Him Sau (陸謙受) and his various business and personal records. There are some 950 pieces of architectural drawings, dated approximately from 1948 to 1968, of building projects in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Macau and Taiwan. The business and personal records include work diaries, professional certificates issued by authorities in China, Hong Kong and other countries, lecture notes, office records and over 1,730 poems of Luke’s experience in Hong Kong and New York.
More Hong Kong Image links

Image in Books

Hong Kong in picture; 100 photographs and two maps from the book Hong Kong in picture and story
Publication Date: 1954
香港　記錄 (1950-1980) : 陳　迹　攝影集 = Hong Kong on the record (1950's-1980's) : a collection of photographs by Chan Chik.
Publication Date: 1999
解密百年香港
Publication Date: 2008
Hong Kong as it was : Hedda Morrison's photographs 1946-47
Publication Date: 2009 Rev. ed.
香港明信片 (1890's-1940's)
Publication Date: 2012
昔日香港 : 1964年航測照片集= Hong Kong in old times : a collection of aerial photos taken in 1964
Publication Date: 2007
Post impressions : 100 years of the South China morning post
Publication Date: 2004. 2nd ed.
Ancestral images [electronic resource] : a Hong Kong collection / by Hugh baker
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9789888083091
Publication Date: 2011
A new edition in one volume of Hugh Baker's celebrated three volumes of Ancestral Images originally published in 1979, 1980 and 1981. The 120 articles and photographs explore everyday life, customs and rituals in Hong Kong's rural New Territories. Each mouthful is complete in itself, but together the articles amount to a substantial feast. They investigate religion, food, language, history, festivals, family, strange happenings and clan warfare. The book documents much that can no longer be found. But it also provides an understanding of a world which has not yet entirely disappeared, and which still forms the background for life in modern, urban Hong Kong.