Two Years in East Asia: Travelling in Hong Kong 1907-1909

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(1871–1957) traveled to the East during the first decade of the twentieth century, recorded his journey in a hitherto unpublished diary, and photographed and self-developed hundreds of images that today present rare visual resources of the former colonial city and its busy and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

In an ever more developing Hong Kong, Bozóky's beautiful black-and-white and hand-colored pictures present historic documents that allow us to retrace 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.