Snapshots of Liverpool, Hong Kong feature in new photo exhibition

A photographic exhibition focusing on life in Liverpool and Hong Kong opened here Friday.

LOOK/17 international photography festival zooms in on an interchange of images and ideas between two cities on two continents.

The festival, "Cities of Exchange: Liverpool/Hong Kong," runs between April 7 and May 14, exploring the way both places are experienced and interpreted by photographers.

The festival, which takes place every two years, was first launched in 2007 and is now one of the biggest events of its kind in Britain.

This year, festival organizers commissioned a number of artists to create new works for display at exhibitions taking place in venues across Liverpool, including the Museum of Liverpool, the University of Liverpool's Victoria Gallery and Museum, and the main downtown shopping area, Liverpool ONE.

The main hub of the festival is the waterfront Open Eye Gallery, one of Britain's best known photography galleries, established 40 years ago.

For LOOK/17, Open Eye worked with Hong Kong-based curator Ying Kwok who says the festival centers on the theme of urbanism and the challenges faced globally and locally.

Artist Wo Bik Wong focuses on the historic waterfront Port of Liverpool Building as a symbol of historical colonialism, while London-based Derek Man traveled to Hong Kong to examine housing issues in "the world's least affordable city."

One of the new commissions is by Hong Kong-based Luke Ching who transformed a room at the Titanic Hotel in Liverpool into a giant pinhole camera to create a work that "reflects on permanent and temporary space." Endit