With the delicate beauty and traditional motifs of Chinese painting (birds, boats, mountains, etc.) in mind, photographers of [Asian pictorialism] used more than one negative to create a beautiful picture, often using visual allegories. Realism was not a goal.
Don Hong-Oai was one of the last photographers to work in this manner.
Given the available technology in the era these images were created, they are remarkable achievements. As documents they remind me of the work of Edward Sherif Curtis, chronicles of a passing way of life. The pitch-perfect matching of style with content is magic. Beautiful.
More of the images of Don Hong-Oai are available on Picasa. The cyrillic-script identification on the pages makes me a bit uncomfortable for provenance and proper copyright attribution, since I don't read that language. I'm taking it on faith that a Picasa posting is respectful of the artist's rights.
That said, the images deserve to be sent further and wider in the world, and I am more than comfortable to be a part of that. I would hope that Don Hong-Oai, who died in 2004, would be happy to see them on their way.
There is, after all, an eternal aura to them.
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