it is up for discussion whether the publication of lyonnais photographer tom spach’s small, decidely unpolitical photographic essay high garden hong kong (published at kehrer verlag) comes at a particularly inopportune time, our image of the special administrative region in southern china dominated by outrage and violence, protest and suppression – or whether it provides exactly the kind of distance and repose necessary to not lose sight of the ever bigger picture, the one outlasting mankind’s man-made struggles: nature and the ways it develops beauty and strength in the face of adversity.

in high garden hong kong, spach juxtaposes the city’s towering, skyscraping, often inhumanely compartmentalized architecture and the mountainous areas surrounding hong kong proper as well as lush outbursts of green springing to life in its very center, all of it quietly repeating the undying invitation for interaction and, ultimately, peace – a gift that surpasses every snapshot in time framed by pain and blood.