Chan Dick’s aerial photos of a Hong Kong fire station taken from a toilet window

The minimalism in photographer Chan Dick’s series is beautifully quiet. Taken above from a toilet window, the photographer documents the daily happenings at Chai Wan fire station in Hong Kong and the result is a series of serene and thoughtful images.

“One day I was busy in my workshop when I heard a noise coming from the bathroom. Curious, I opened the window and looked down and saw firefighters playing volleyball,” explains Chan. “For the next month, I dedicated myself to observation and bit by bit discovered the routine of this small unusual space.”

Sparse and considered, Chan was “mesmerised by the minimalist arrangement of objects in that little, green patch of land… I saw them train, playing volleyball in the evenings, guide kids around on field trips and the occasional official inspection.”

Like a square stage, tiny figures move in elegant formations with appearances from a toy-sized fire truck and a liquorice-like hose and it’s the scale of everything that makes the series so interesting. “Due to the narrowness of the window, and the top-down angle that I wanted to shoot, I had to hand hold my camera and stick it out of the window pointing down,” explains Chan. This constraint placed upon the photographs creates a wonderful uniformity and show Chan’s patience as a photographer perched and waiting for that perfect moment.

“[The series] is a subtle tribute to our firefighters,” says Chan. “But it’s also about my appreciation for minimalism and the many possibilities it offers and the stories you can find within it with a bit of luck.”