Independent Photographer and Artist

Kurt Tong

Born in Hong Kong in 1977, Kurt gained his Masters in documentary photography at the LCC in 2006 and began working on much more personal projects exploring his Chinese roots and understanding of his motherland. ‘In Case it Rains in Heaven’ , exploring the practice of Chinese funeral offerings, has been widely exhibited including a solo exhibition at Compton Verney and features in several public collections. A monograph of the work was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2011.

‘The Queen, The Chairman and I’, which reconnected the artist with his Chinese roots, is a multilayered narrative book dealing with the story of Hong Kong of the last 100 years and the Asian Diaspora through the lives of his own family. The work is presented as a Chinese teahouse. The project has been exhibited across 4 continents. The monograph was published by Dewi Lewis Publishing and Lianzhou Musuem of Photography in 2019.

‘Combing for Ice and Jade’, a love letter to the artist’s nanny, one of the few remaining self combed women in the world, has won him numerous awards and has been shown at the Himalayas Museum in Shanghai, Finnish Musuem of Photography and Rencontres d’Arles amongst others. A monograph of the work was published by Jiazazhi Press in 2019 and was named one of best Photobooks of 2019 by Time, El País, Esquire, Art Paper amongst others.

In 2022, Kurt was awarded the prestige Prix Elysee and released ‘Dear Franklin’, an epistolary novel about a tragic love story during WW2 in China. The book was co published by Atelier EXB and Photo Elysee and is available in English and French. He is represented by The Photographer’s Gallery in London, Up Gallery in Taiwan and Jen Bekman Gallery in New York.