《我住石硤尾》余偉建 Our Home, Shek Kip Mei 1954-2006 by Vincent Yu (Signed version)

Published by MCCM Creations
reprint edition February 2010
176 pages
Softcover with canvas jacket
180mm (H) x 240mm (W)
English and Chinese
978-988-99266-3-2

石硤尾屋邨興建於1954年初，是香港政府興建的首個公營大型屋邨，以安置在1953年底該區大火引致無家可歸 的災民。石硤尾徙置區的興建、發展、轉化和拆卸，見證了過去50年來香港的社會變遷。本攝影集以照片、文字、 和複製歷史檔案的出版形式，用影像、社會、人文和歷史的情懷，展示行將消失的石硤尾徙置區的生活面貌，作為戰後香港發展歷史一個非常重要和珍貴的個案。

Shek Kip Mei was the first public housing estate project in Kong Kong introduced by the British colonial government in 1954. The resettlement project not only provided a temporary relief to the massive fire of Shek Kip Mei squatter area on Christmas Eve 1953 where over 53,000 Chinese immigrants lost their makeshift homes overnight, it also hailed the era of Government’s public housing programmes accommodating the needs of rapidly growing population in the 1960s and 70s. Shared by many Hong Kong citizens who grew up witnessing the territory’s transformation from a rapid-growing village into the present international metropolis, living in Shek Kip Mei Estates is, in many ways, interpreted as a microcosm of the society. The estates were essentially concrete bunkers lacking the basics of doors and windows, let alone the relative luxury of electricity and running water; a family of 5 to 8 persons jamming in a cubicle of about 120–200 square feet (11–18 square metres), at least 10 households sharing a public toilet/bathroom on the same floor…those were the bygones communal living. Meant to be a temporary resettlement, the flats in the Shek Kip Mei Estates, 50 years later, are still rented out by the government. At this last phase before the demolition of the oldest estates in November 2006, photojournalist Vincent Yu captured through his lens some 120 elderly residents and their ‘homes’ before they were resettled to the modern high–risers after living in the crumbling estates for over five decades.