Queen's Road, Hong Kong by Afong Lai

Albumen print by Afong Lai, mounted on original card/album page. Image of Queen's Road, Hong Kong, ca. 1870s. Visible on the left is the building of the Hong Kong Dispensary, with its decorated arcade, while on the right is the Lane Crawford building with its portico. A sedan chair can be seen in the foreground, and a few more are parked in front of the portico. The image was once part of a 19th century album comprised of views of colonial India and Asia.

Lai Fong (also known as Afong or Afong Lai) was a celebrated and successful commercial photographer, based in Hong Kong in the 1870s. The Afong studio specialized in portraits, such as carte de visites, as well as scenic views. Hong Kong had an active, and competitive, photographic market in the late nineteenth-century with Chinese photographers and European photographers establishing busy studios.