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Except for a brief period after he was wounded by a water cannon, photojournalist Chan Long-hei has rarely missed a protest since they began in mid-2019. From the start, he has embraced one simple goal: get one more shot, get one more image of the truth. In the second half of 2019, he faced a different protest schedule each day – even the protestors who consider themselves the movement’s “fearless” have not been able to guarantee they will be at every protest. Yet journalists are capable of great persistence and of hitting the streets daily. Apart from this being a professional necessity, what drives them forward to an even greater extent is something that cannot be expressed in words, something “unspeakable.”

Turning the pages of Chan Long-hei’s collection, there are images that induce a sense of déjà vu and images that have made their way into the international media. Many more of the images, however, prove to be mundane yet shocking. Chan Long-hei believes we have for the most part been in a state of confusion throughout the entire movement, as if submerged in tear gas – wearing gas masks, we have been groping for the rocks that will allow us to find our way across a river shrouded in poisoned fog. Even someone who has somehow managed to stick close to the front line doesn’t dare sketch an outline of the movement. Recalling 1997’s handover transition period, much of the creative output dealt with the ’97 handover. People assumed that Hong Kong would suddenly change forever, and hoped to express themselves while they could still breathe freely; after ’97, totalitarianism did not arrive overnight, yet 22 years later, an increasingly hard line is being drawn everywhere in the city. 2019 saw a new chapter in Hong Kong's history, with the strength of two million people united in the midst of this storm.

We insist on self-publishing this collection, hoping only to leave a footnote to the protest movement that falls somewhere between the historical and the personal, as well as to express our frank sincerity and humility. A photographer’s influence may be limited, but leafing through the pages with these photographs from the protests, a variety of feelings well up for which there are no words. In 2020, the people of Hong Kong are once again standing in the shadows of an epidemic, but the road of resistance remains long. The wheel of history has not yet turned, so we must persevere.