Basketball spots everywhere: from roofs to lonely islands

The Blue Lotus Gallery is located in Hong Kong, surrounded by hip cafes and vintage shops in the narrow, tree-lined streets of the creative district of Shung Wan. It towers on several floors from concrete levels and is only a stone's throw away from numerous basketball spots - in parks, on roofs and hidden between skyscrapers. In fact, there are a total of 22 basketball spots in a 600 meter (1,968 feet).

basketball in Hong Kong: An unexpected fascination

The proximity to so many basketball spots is no coincidence in Hong Kong. The American photographer Austin Bell estimates that the city has more outdoor sports places than New York or Los Angeles. He has set himself the task of photographically capturing every single place in Hong Kong. The result is shown in its exhibition in the gallery, which runs until February 23, as well as in his photo book " Shooting "> Hoops . ”

The emergence of the project

With his camera and drone, Bell took over 58,000 photos of 2,549 colorful basketball spots. This project extended over three years due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Bell explained that the project was a way to "experience the city" and to examine its often unconventional approach to urban planning. "It's not really about sport - it's more about architecture, the colors, the surroundings and the topography of Hong Kong," he added.

100 places per day

BELL’s interest in Hong Kong's basketball spots began with his first visit to the city in 2017, when he visited the colorful Choi Hung, a public residential project lined with colorful basketball spots. These places have developed into an "Instagram hotspot" that attracts many photographers like Bell. After taking this photo, he didn't think much about it until he discovered basketball spots in other unusual and colorful places.

The challenge of discovery

"I started to map them on Google Maps," said Bell. After returning in autumn 2019, he decided to find all places. With the help of satellite images, he identified basketball spots that were hidden between apartment blocks, on Mall roofs or in a dense jungle on remote islands. He obsessively followed them in tables.

When he seriously started the project, Bell photographed up to 100 places on some days. "This is not really crazy", considering the dense Hong Kong, which is populated with 7,060 people per square kilometer of the fourth test populated, according to Data from 2021 .

variety and unconventional use

Over the years, Bell has observed that basketball spots are used for many other activities, beyond their original provision. "I saw choir rehearsals, people who carry out their turtles or people who dry orange shells - everything you can imagine," says Bell. "The main purpose is basketball, but you can see all of these other activities."

a long history of basketball

basketball, a game that was invented in the USA in 1891 as a safe but entertaining contact sport for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), has a large fan base in Hong Kong for more than a century. Jeroen van Ameijde, assistant professor for urban design at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, suspects that the arrival of the YMCA in the city in 1901 and the construction of contemporary sports facilities probably triggered the basketball frenzy in Hong Kong.

plans for more relaxation rooms

With the rapid population growth in the 1950s and 60s, the leisure site for urban planners became increasingly important. This was later determined in guidelines for new residential projects, which stipulated that An external basketball court per 10,000 higher proportion than with any other leisure facility.

The attraction of the old basketball spots

The public basketball spots of Hong Kong are only part of the story. The majority of Bell's photos, around 1,800, shows school basketball spots that he recorded with a drone. Access to these places is one of the biggest differences that Bell watched between the basketball fields in Hong Kong and those in New York, where he photographed an estimated 1,000 places and mapped as many again.

The future of the basketball projection

Although Bell continues to monitor the locations of new places, he is unsure whether he will resume the project. "The number has already changed. Since I completed this project, there have been new places, new residential projects have been built," he says.

magic in everyday

The exhibition and the book not only serve to document a niche. For Bell it was an exercise to make the ordinary magical. "We take all of these visual things, such as basketball spots, for granted," he says. "But in reality, if you summarize them in one picture or show them in 2D, you can see that they are really something special."