Hong Kong Nature Landscapes

Hong Kong Nature Landscapes is a retrospective of Edward Stokes’ finest Hong Kong photographs. Follow him on this personal journey, exploring the nearest and most remote regions of Hong Kong countryside. Passion for nature and photography shine through the book’s images.

Hong Kong Nature Landscapes explores the countryside’s most memorable regions: Hong Kong Island, the Northeastern New Territories, Wilson Trail, Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, and the Outlying Islands. Each region is portrayed with images of its key features, and engaging reflective essays that capture the landscapes, human stories, natural history and ecology.

The book will inspire all those interested in heritage, nature or photography. Notes on Hong Kong’s natural history add to the book. Edward Stokes’ appreciation of light, and his visual and technical mastery of landscape photography, enrich the images and inform the detailed yet accessible photographic commentaries.

The Chinese expression for ‘landscape’ is shan shui, meaning ‘mountains water’. As the book’s images reveal, the phrase suits Hong Kong perfectly. In very few other South China regions are hills and sea blended together in such dramatic grandeur. And in few other places do natural beauty, superb landscapes and diverse ecology exist so close to a great metropolis.

Part of the magic of the Hong Kong countryside lies in this proximity to the city. But the countryside’s deeper appeal springs from its purely natural features: sheer slopes and ridges; cascading streams and wooded valleys; rocky coasts and islands; and the native flora and fauna.

The book’s photographs were taken by Edward Stokes between 1993 and 2003. Since then, the Hong Kong urban districts have changed greatly. Yet its Country Parks, which this book celebrates, remain the same. As they are seen here—Captivating and rewarding.

Edward Stokes is a photographer and writer. Originally from Australia, he grew up in Hong Kong and studies at Magdalen College, Oxford. He later completed five books that portrayed Australia’s history and landscape, most illustrated with his own images. He returned to Hong Kong in 1993, to work on projects about the natural landscape.

“Edward Stokes is a photographer, historian and conservationist, and this publication reflects each of those qualities. Through his photographs he captures the evolution of Hong Kong’s natural landscapes, and he portrays their intrinsic beauty and ecology.” —Dr Gary Ades, Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden