HISTORY – Hedda Morrison’s Hong Kong: Photos from 1942, Beautifully Restored


German photographer Hedda Morrison was famous for shooting the final years of Republican China. Using a Rolleiflex twin lens, she spent 13 years during the 30s and 40s documenting pre-Communist China and Malaysia. The magical collection below, from 1946, was carefully restored by Flickr user ralphrepo_photolog.

The first shot shows pedestrians and vendors on Pottinger Street, Central. Looking up towards Wellington Street, there are restaurants, tailors, photographic shops and other speciality stores lining steps. (Click here to view this street today, or here to learn more about its history)…

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Hedda Morrison – click to enlarge

A view of old villages in Ho Man Tin and Hung Hom. Now, almost all land in Kowloon been filled with high rises and many of these mountains flattened…

Hedda Morrison

A man surrounded by hanging dried fish, somewhere in HK Island’s Eastern District…

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Hedda Morrison

One of Morrison’s most famous and iconic shots – a young mother carrying a child on her back at the market…

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Hedda Morrison

Fisher families with junks in Aberdeen Harbour…

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Hedda Morrison

A typical backstreet in Western District. Signs advertise printers, rubber stamp makers and business stationery suppliers.

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Hedda Morrison

This final, unrestored shot gets an honorary mention. It shows an unrecognisable Kowloon taken from the back of the Peninsula Hotel – Lion Rock is clearly visible and Whitfield Barracks (now Kowloon Park) can be seen on the left.

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Morrison died in 1991 aged 82 – her husband (Alastair Morrison, son of the famous George Ernest Morrison) donated her work to Harvard and several Australian universities…

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Related links…

Blog posts charting Hong Kong’s colourful past…

Pictorial histories of local landmarks and events…



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