The Natural Beauty of Hong Kong is a boon to those both new and old to the territory. Known for our urban density, iconic skyscrapers and monolithic housing blocks, telling an uninitiated friend from afar that 40 per cent of Hong Kong land is government-preserved green space and that countless beaches are a short cab ride from the city centre is like issuing a casting call for “Incredulity”. But so then, here, in a folio of 190 glossy pages, is your proof of Hong Kong’s diverse and wide-ranging natural resplendence.

Hong Kong born photographer, Luiz Antonio Souza, begins the book with a map, and the pages that follow are presented as the results of a multi-day peregrination around the perimeter of the Hong Kong SAR. He begins at Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong’s highest peak, and works his way up and around the island cluster clockwise, passing through Plover Cove and Double Haven, down and around the eastern coastal isles, onto Hong Kong Island, over to Lantau, and concluding in the Mai Po Marshes in the far north west. In the process he captures dramatic rock formations, volcanic tuffs, tranquil havens, outer islands, rocky harbours, and swampy wetlands. In addition to the lavishly rendered landscapes, the region’s most striking flora and fauna are duly documented: mudskippers, cormorants, fiddler crabs, black-faced spoonbills, egrets, macaques, melastomas, and more. The photos from each area are accompanied by brief expository ruminations – Souza’s personal memory’s and impressions from past visits or general geographical and historical info.

Life in the world’s most vertically dense city can often grow dispiriting. City dwellers, be they in New York, Moscow, or Rio, always settle into routines, cutting familiar paths through the urban topography, and oft returning to their usual establishments. In Hong Kong, it can sometimes feel as if we live nestled into the circuitry of a mega-processor, ferrying between nodes, with transistors, chips and mechanical structures towering all around us, insignificant particles trapped in a hot-box system of overwhelming flux and inhumane compression. Luiz’s book, while adding little to the great tradition of nature photography, offers the solace of a simple reminder: Just outside your door, beyond the next housing block, there are clean, pristine, all-green spaces.

Patrick Brzeski