From rooftops to remote islands, this city has basketball courts everywhere
CNN
Hong Kong has more outdoor basketball courts than any other city in the world, according to photographer Austin Bell, who spent several years photographing over 2,500 of them for his new book, “Shooting Hoops.”
Perched atop several flights of concrete stairs, Blue Lotus Gallery is nestled beside hipster coffee shops and vintage stores in the narrow, tree-lined lanes of Hong Kong’s artsy Sheung Wan district. It’s also surrounded by basketball courts: in parks, balanced on rooftops and invisibly sequestered between skyscrapers. All in all, there are 22 courts within a 600-meter (1,968-foot) radius of the gallery. Its proximity to so many basketball courts is, oddly, not an anomaly in Hong Kong. American photographer Austin Bell estimates that the city has more outdoor courts than even New York or Los Angeles, after scouring satellite images and as part of his mission to photograph every one of them in Hong Kong. It’s the subject of his exhibition at the gallery, running until February 23, and his photobook, “Shooting Hoops.” Using his camera and drone, Bell took over 58,000 photos of 2,549 colorful basketball courts; a project spread across three years due to the coronavirus pandemic. The project was a way to “experience the city” and examine its often unconventional approach to urban design, said Bell. “It’s not really about the sport — it’s more just about the architecture, the color, the surroundings and the topography of Hong Kong,” he added.
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