T.O. Lee Consultants Ltd - Photography Column 307

My Salute To A Great Master

(December 1994 Issue, Photo Asia Magazine, Singapore)

Photography is very popular in Hong Kong. Some take it as a hobby. Some respect it as fine arts. Some practise it as applied arts. No matter how you call it and no matter how you practise it, it is often difficult to find a common figure that photographers from all levels do pay respect to.
So far I know only one. And his name is Mr. Solman Lo.
It took Mr. Lo a lifetime's unreserved commitment in photography to have achieved this enviable position. And after almost two years of his death, I wish to revisit his valuable contributions to photography amongst the Chinese community in Hong Kong and the China Towns all over the world.
Before Mr. Lo took on photography seriously, he was once a Supplies Officer on board an English battleship stationed in Singapore. That means his English standard was quite good, particularly in the forties, although most of his disciples and friends thought that he knew little about the language.
When he later moved to Hong Kong, he took up photography very seriously as an art, although most of his friends and disciples were more attached to the salon photographic clubs. He opened his studio exclusively for black and white portraitures. His client list was practically a "who is who" in Hong Kong at the time. He also organised photo workshops for portrait, landscape and still life photography. His fees were known to be the highest in the market but he did not have to worry about his business as his disciples came from word of mouth recommendations.
Mr. Lo was known in Hong Kong as "Mr. Yusef Karsh" for his black and white portraiture works and "Mr. Ansel Adams" for his landscape works. He had a full collection of albums of these two masters in his studio. He told me that his landscape works all carried a touch of "Tao" and "Zen" which one couldn't find in the works of Ansel Adams.
In his later years, he had shifted more towards landscape, mainly due to his fascination for the mysterious and ever changing Huang Shan, the Yellow Mountain, which presents completely different scenes and weathers in the four seasons of the year, with showers and "sea of clouds" coming and disappearing in matter of minutes. He even had chosen a site at the bottom of the mountain as his graveyard. He made more than ten visits to that mountain and had practically covered every corner of photo interest.
To Ansel Adams, we have the Yosemite. To Mr. Lo we have the Huang Shan. The former is well known for his Zone System technique and the latter is famous for his negative painting technique. On top of proficiency in restoring, retouching, and other forms of transformation, he could even add fogs, mists and clouds in the strategic positions on the negatives to create the poetic effects.
His personal style is quite different from that of Ansel Adams. He did not like his landscape images to appear too sharp. That is why he always used larger aperture and placed the subject at the tail part of the depth of field scale to ensure the subject appeared not too sharp.
Chinese horticulture was equally important in his later years and he was a real master in this field. He spent ten years creating a "landscaped" plant, twisting and whining it to guide the plant grow in the shape and direction he wanted. Each pot of plant is a masterpiece. The price tag of each plant could be ten thousand Hong Kong dollars.
He told me that the best time to work on his negative was three in the morning, when the surrounding was so tranquil and peaceful. When day broke, he started to do some Taichi exercises in front of a "Taichi" plant. His body movements coincided with the curls and twists of that plant. Each curl or twist represented a "Tao" and "Zen" doctrine. This is fascinating to the Westerners who do not know what Yin and Yang mean.
He was a big spender. He could spend all he had in day without any regret. That is why he never let his friends pay the bill in the restaurant. When he asked me to help him negotiate with the Hong Kong Arts Centre to give him a shift of exhibition space, I had to "black-mail" him to allow me to pay for the restaurant bill. In a place like Hong Kong where the land is always so expensive, it would be difficult for him to find a house to live. However, Chinese always believe that when God creates a bird, He also creates the worms. Hence, the head of a Chinese Temple in Shatin, who was an admirer of his virtues, let Mr. Lo use the estate attached to the temple - a wide piece of land of about twenty thousand square feet which Mr. Lo turned it into a private garden to house his horticulture works, guided by five dogs and three cats. Each time I visited him, I had to give him a phone call to ensure that the dogs were all locked. He named that place "The Leisure Garden".
There were a lot of legends surrounding his total dedication to photography. He used real pearls, big and expensive ones, which he had hand-picked exclusively for the training workshops. He asked his apprentice to keep on buying biscuits in printed tin plated cans from the nearby grocery stores until he found one meeting his stringent requirements, with a perfectly rectangular shape and impeccable finish. His disciples started to worry that he might end up losing money in those workshops.
He was a frenetic about German antique lenses. When he passed his Voigtlander Universal Heliar 36CM/1:4,5F to me, he told me that he spent a lot of time and effort for it when he was young. He once knew a professional photographer borrowing money from a pawn shop, surrendering that lens as a collateral. Since that time he visited the pawn shop practically everyday, asking whether the owner had abandoned redemption. He could anticipate that this indecent act could ultimately make him paying much more for that lens but he thought it was worth doing to ensure that he could secure the lens he loved to own.
In the fifties, when Kodak launched a new dark room chemical, they gave Mr. Lo a free sample for trial. The instruction expressly stated that it must be used and stored in low temperature. When he showed to the Kodak people the wonderful results that chemical could achieve, the people in Kodak was amazed and asked how he could achieve that exceptionally good effect. He told them "No tricks, I just boiled it before use!"
He was a very straight-tempered artist. If he did not like you or your ideas, he would certainly let you know, but in the hard way. Rumours began to spread. "If you have not been scolded by Mr. Lo, I am afraid you are still a small potato."
He was completely unpretentious, insisting on certain morale principles and value system of his own. He had a lot of rich disciples but he never took advantage of their financial strengths. He was out of this world. That is the reason why I respect him as a true master. And he is the only one photographer I know that is respected by everyone in Hong Kong and other parts of the world where there are Chinese.
During the second anniversary of his death, I wish to dedicate this article in memory of this true Master I always love and respect.

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