Behind Kasper Forest's Award-Winning Portraits of Hong Kong's Marginalized Communities
Captured over a decade, this is a deeply human record of life on the edge.
Hong Kong photographer Kasper Forest just earned international recognition for his decade-long documentary project Conflict Hong Kong, winning the Gold Prize in the Professional Film Photography category at the 2025 Tokyo International Foto Awards.
Spanning 10 years, the series captures the city’s social and cultural transformations through intimate, black-and-white portraits of marginalized communities, including the homeless, ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA+ individuals and cultural outsiders. More than a visual archive, the project pairs photographs with personal testimonies, giving subjects space to share their own stories in their own words. The featured narratives reflect the project’s core message: that difference is not a weakness, but a powerful form of existence.
Conflict Hong Kong is not just about documenting, but also hopes to inspire social intervention through provoking public reflection and action. Curator Raymond Wong notes that this decade-long project is not just about presenting images but is also an experiment in rethinking perception. Wong asks, “Photographs can tell stories, but how much do we truly hear?”
Committed to shooting on film, the artist shares, “In an age flooded with AI-generated images, people no longer trust images. That’s why we need those laborious, ritualistic methods of creation.” His approach has resulted in a deeply human record of life on the margins.
The exhibition Human Conflicts – A Decade of Recording the Invisible will be held from February 13 to March 1, at Victoria 1842 Bookstore in Shinjuku, Tokyo.
In other news, Bad Bunny just made Super Bowl history.
