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Travel

Seen From Below, Hong Kong's Neon Signs Look Like Electric Rainbows

Photographer Ranier Torrado offers up a glimpse at the inner workings of Hong Kong’s glowing streets.
All images © Rainer Torrado, 

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Photographer Rainer Torrado practices the art of “visual metonymy,” exposing the unexpected with his probing lens. In his image series Eye Carry The Night, the artist reveals the secret life of Hong Kong’s notorious neon signs in twelve photographic cross sections. Torrado doesn't catch the fixtures head on, but instead captures them from below, isolating and centering the structures to bring an atypical perspective to light.

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In each image, the sign’s supportive center runs the length of the frame, dividing the bright underbelly of tangled gas-discharge tubes into two halves of manufactured symmetry. On both sides, the wire tendrils of the signs’ supports slice through the dark, needles of color against the black canvas of the night sky. With no manipulation or editing to enhance his images, Eye Carry The Night goes back to photography’s oft forgotten prerequisites of angle and exposure and an eye for the unexplored.

Peer up at the inner workings of Hong Kong’s glowing streets with these selections from Torrado’s Eye Carry The Night:

© Rainer Torrado

© Rainer Torrado

 © Rainer Torrado

© Rainer Torrado

© Rainer Torrado

© Rainer Torrado

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