Lessons

Ho Tam Lessons

In 1998, I traveled back to Hong Kong to revisit my elementary school, La Salle Primary. Two decades had passed, yet there were the schoolboys in the same uniforms, moving through the same everyday routines. I was immediately transported to my own time as a student. Under British rule, we had enjoyed a relatively liberal education. Colonial Hong Kong was never perfect, but it was a vibrant metropolis on the rise—a place many in Mainland China looked toward with hope and aspiration.

Fast-forward to 2026: Hong Kong is now a 'special administrative region' overseen by the Chinese Communist Party. While China’s economic power expands, Hong Kong has diminished into a police state. Since the government crackdowns of recent years, many families have chosen to leave and relocate, seeking shelter from the erasure of individual rights and freedom of speech. I worry about how the boys who remain will grow up in such an uncertain time.

Looking at the images in Lessons, I am again moved by the innocence and intimacy of the subjects. No matter how I, as an artist, try to frame and manipulate the context, the boys in these pictures retain an autonomy and a life of their own. While time has changed, for better or worse, everyone must find their own path, and there are still many lessons to be learned.

Ho Tam
23 January 2026

Presented as a Core Exhibition of the CONTACT Photography Festival.


HO TAM (b. 1962, Hong Kong) is a media/visual artist who has worked in advertising and community psychiatry. He received a BA from McMaster University (1985) and an MFA from Bard College, NY (2001-20020. From 1996 to 1997 he was a participant at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Tam has exhibited in public galleries and alternative spaces across Canada, including the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (2001) and two survey exhibitions, A Portrait of the Photographer, Paul Petro Contemporary Art (2015), and Cover To Cover at the Richmond Art Gallery, BC (2018). Tam's work was also included in The Tin Man Was A Dreamer: Allegories, Poetics And Performances Of Power at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2020). Over 15 of his experimental film/video works are in circulation including screenings at Centre Pompidou, Paris, Toronto International Film Festival, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and the widely circulated exhibition Magnetic North: Canadian Experimental Video organized by the Walker Art Center, Minnesota and Plug In Inc., Winnipeg, MB (2000-2002).

Tam is a recipient of various grants and awards, including the Grand Marnier Video Fellowship (2003) from the Film Society of Lincoln Center (New York) and the Best Documentary Feature at Tel Aviv LGBT Film Festival. Permanent collections include the National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery and RBC, Toronto.

From 2004 to 2011, Tam taught in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Victoria. Ho Tam lives in Vancouver, BC. He recently edited and published Frontline: Interviews with International Photo-based Artists. Tam is also the publisher of Hotam Press, an independent press of artist books, and currently runs a bookshop and gallery of the same name. Ho Tam lives in Vancouver, BC and has been exhibiting at Paul Petro Contemporary Art since 2002.