You get a sense of the power that Liam Wong’s pictures possess when you realise his new book, After Dark, was backed by a crowdfunding campaign that reached over five times its initial £40,000 target. His previous tome, TO:KY:OO, focused on the Japanese capital and his neon-lit, cyber punk-style, nighttime urban images evoked visions of classic sci-fi noir movies such as Blade Runner. But, for his latest book, Liam has gone for arguably slightly more subdued colours and has travelled around the world, shooting in cities such as Seoul, Paris, London, Chongqing, Osaka, Hong Kong and his hometown city of Edinburgh.
After Dark is his second monograph and, as with TO:KY:OO, it features cities shot in the small hours of the morning and has superb design with specially created typography (by Toshi Omagari) which, this time, was inspired by the work of legendary Chinese film director Won Kar Wai. The book also deliberately features Swiss binding, which allows its spine to lay flat and means the central parts of images running across spreads don’t get lost in the gutter of the book.
Of, Liam explains, ‘There were all these places that I visited, but it wasn’t something that I necessarily thought, “Yeah, this is a series.” That was the difference. With it was three or four years of images of one city. But then online I would post, “Here’s London after dark,” “Here’s Osaka after dark.” At some point, I was like, “Well, what
