On 22 February 2026 at 4:30 pm at Lab27, Pierfrancesco Celada will present a selection of his most significant works, developed predominantly in Hong Kong, where he lived between 2014 and 2022. It was there that he consolidated a photographic and editorial practice capable of observing and conveying the metropolis as a complex organism, connecting personal experience with a broader sociological perspective. His gaze, both analytical and engaged, investigates his own and others’ relationships with urban space, focusing on gestures, signs, and habits, as well as on the ways in which the city is observed, traversed, and imagined.
Projects such as "When I feel down I take a train to the Happy Valley", "Counting Ships", and "Instagrampier" portray Hong Kong as a place of stark contrasts: claustrophobic yet open, hyper-dense and in constant dialogue with the sea and nature. His work reveals a curiosity that is at times playful, alongside an investigative approach that conveys a certain persistence of vision, together with empathy, desire, and self-representation—as in the case of the public pier transformed into a shared set for the imagery of social networks. The result is a multifaceted portrait of one of the most densely populated metropolises in the world, in which the urban landscape gives form to the tensions, aspirations, and fragilities of contemporary life.