The truth stays in the picture

Lo Yuk-ying's 34 images memorializing the era stood out among the film stills and on-set photographs on display at Off-sets: Photographies of Hong Kong Cinema, the main exhibition of this year's Hong Kong International Photo Festival (HKIPF), which concluded Nov 27 at Shek Kip Mei's Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre. The ballsy, self-taught photographer would pick her moment to swoop in with her wide-angle lens and capture an actor with their guard down. For instance, she managed to snap Kwan Tak-hing - whose wide-eyed look while playing Guangdong martial arts master Wong Fei-hung was practically iconic - with his eyes closed during a brief rest break.

"I consider myself a cold-blooded hunter," wrote the photographer in the exhibition guide. "Hidden in the shadows. One shot, one kill."

Man Lim-chung, a co-curator of the exhibition, was among the three image-makers featured in a section dedicated to movies by the legendary auteur Wong Kar-wai. Candid stills by Man, shot in between filming a deleted scene from In the Mood for Love (2000), came to life on large silkscreens hanging from the ceiling. A cheeky snap of Maggie Cheung - by Christopher Doyle, Wong's longtime cinematographer - showed the star, bug-eyed and looking out of the window of a red car, a Polaroid of herself in the same car window held between her teeth. Such shots provide a fascinating glimpse into the moviemaking process - in this case, the use of Polaroids for continuity.