In the fall of 2014, thousands of men and women–predominantly students–spontaneously staged a 79-day protest and occupation of three key districts of Hong Kong (Admiralty, Causeway Bay, and Mong Kok), in defense of democratic ideals and in defiance of the world’s most powerful and feared authoritarian regime.
Aside from a principal call for universal suffrage in choosing their elected officials, “The Umbrella Movement” enabled many an activist and artist to utilize their political astuteness and urban environs to elevate and promote non-violent civil disobedience, as well as lend a distinctive and richly expressive aesthetic to their repudiation of Beijing’s intransigence regarding civil liberties.
Inasmuch as this series is meant to honor such courage and discipline in the face of tyranny, it is also a meant to be seen through the lens of art history. How the “Umbrella Artivists” of Hong Kong drew both creative and political inspiration from such past modernist movements as Dadaism and Constructivism, to render distinctive their embrace of self-determination.
R.K. Moore | wndlst@icloud.com
Wanderlust Photography
www.wndlst.com | TW: @wndlst_k | IG: wndlstphoto
Bio
I am an artist, with which documentary photography has long been the focus of my creative process. My previous 10-year career as a U.S. Army Warrant Officer and criminal investigator continues to inform and reinforce my approach to visual subject matter, both in terms of discipline and the socio-political sensitivities often involved in matters of human interest.
Through the lens–from Seoul to Berlin, Asia to Europe, East to West, and parts therein–I have been privileged to become acquainted with a variety of landscapes; how their textures, lines, colors, light, form, and function can be composed or enhanced in a manner that evokes a sense of connectedness or alights viewer curiosity.
These manufactured or natural environs provide me endless, boundless opportunities for aesthetic exploration.
