The Last Supper – 21 Days in Quarantine Meals

ISBN: 978-9-08355-703-8
Photography: Dean C.K. Cox
Text Editing: James Brock
Photo Editing: Zandra Knutsson
Design: Daniel & Andrew
Publisher: Arts & Culture Hong Kong International (Den Haag, The Netherlands)

Introduction

In early September of 2021, my younger daughter and I returned to a typical Hong Kong late-summer day: bright skies above, the city shimmering with stifling heat and heavy humidity. We had just wheeled our suitcases into a modest hotel in Ma Tau Wai, a dense, working-class neighborhood on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. That check-in wasn’t the start of a vacation. It wasn’t a journey of choice, but of necessity. It was the beginning of a government-mandated 21-day quarantine that would separate us from the world just beyond our hotel room windows. In the end, our twenty-one days were measured not so much by calendars and clocks as by the rhythm of sixty-two meals, the slow passage of time marked out in portions, in routines that gave shape to an otherwise formless confinement. To give structure to this suspended time, I began this photographic project: documenting every meal that arrived at our door. Each photograph was paired with the hotel’s printed menu description, along with a personal rating on a scale of one to ten. What began as a small distraction soon became something more—a meditation on repetition, a study in sameness and variation, and, in its own way, a quiet rebellion. It was a different perspective of documenting a unique moment in time of global movement and dependence. By paying close attention to the details of each meal, I reclaimed a measure of agency within the imposed monotony. What could have been only dreary sustenance became a record of endurance, a reminder that, even in confinement, there are ways to shape meaning and to remember. Foreword by renowned Hong Kong anthropologist Dr. Gordon Mathew and afterword by Leon Shu-Kwan Suen, vice-chairman of the Hong Kong International Photo Festival and founding member of Lumenvisum.

About the Author

Dean C.K. Cox is a documentary photographer, photojournalist, and former Senior Lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist University. With over 30 years of experience, his work spans Europe, Asia, and post-conflict regions worldwide, and has been published by major international media including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, BBC, and Bloomberg News.