The truth stays in the picture

Hong Kong cinema's golden age of the 1980s and '90s was also the tail end of the film-camera era, a time when photographers never knew exactly what they'd shot until their pictures were developed. With no nosy requests to see photos just taken of a director or actor, still photographers - creators of images used primarily in the marketing and publicity of feature films - were free to do their work relatively unimpeded, having been admitted into the inner sanctum of a movie set.