[5][6] Largely self-taught, his photos display a fascination with urban life, explored alleys, slums, markets and streets.

[7] He developed his images in the family bathtub and soon had built up a significant body of work, chronicling Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s as it was becoming a major metropolitan centre.

[Laughs]Upon seeing Ho's work for the first time in 2006, gallery owner Laurence Miller commented that "[they] felt like direct descendants of the Bauhaus, yet they were made in Hong Kong.

He asked a cousin to pose by a wall at Queen's College in Causeway Bay and added a diagonal shadow in the darkroom to symbolize that "her youth will fade away" since "everyone has the same destiny".

Ho played the Monk, Tripitaka, in the lavish Shaw Brothers adaption of Journey to the West four-picture cycle of films.

[citation needed] Ho became disillusioned with Shaw's revenue-driven formula, and sought creative relief in photography and in other studios.

One is still and one is moving—that is the only difference.Ho left Shaw Brothers in 1969 to develop his career as a director, making over 20 films with various studios in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

According to Mark Pinsukanjana, director of Modernbook Gallery in San Francisco, CA, his debut feature, Lost (1969), was Ho's favourite.

[citation needed] Ho's wife and children emigrated to San Jose, California in 1979 to pursue a university education[9] and he followed in 1995 after retiring from cinema.

[9] He exhibited slides of his photographs, some of which were in the permanent collection at SFMOMA, at the 1998 New Asian Cinema Festival, which was screening his 1988 film Carnal Desire at the 4 Star Theater in San Francisco.

[9] Modernbook went on to stage his vintage work at photoLA in January 2006, and upon seeing his photographs of Hong Kong, fellow gallery owner Laurence Miller was moved to acquire 26 prints and put on a solo exhibit for Ho in New York City later that year.

[7][16] Many of the resulting composited prints were published for the first time in his final monograph A Hong Kong Memoir in 2014,[10] following exhibits of the same title at Modernbook in summer 2011[18] and from December 2014 to January 2015.

After his death, his surviving family members spent about a year completing the project, together with support from Sarah Greene (Blue Lotus Gallery) and WE Press (香港人出版).