IWD 2025 — searching for peace. An image by Daisy Wu.
In these troubles times, we need to be positive and seek peace and harmony.
Caption for the photograph: All quiet on the western front, 1955
Titled from the international best-selling anti-war novel of 1929 by German Erich Maria Remarque made into a Hollywood film in 1930 by Universal studios. Daisy Wu had technical expertise in montage but this sombre emotionally powerful image is out of keeping with her more conventional salon style portraiture, tableaux, genre or landscape work.
What prompted the reference to the German novelist is unknown. It is an unusual theme among photographic salon contemporaries.
Daisy Wu was born in Hawaii where she met her future husband Francis Wu who had come to Hawaii with his mother and siblings where his father was already established as a merchant. In 1932 Daisy travelled to Francis’s home town in Buck Toy China to be married on 1 June. They then moved to Hong Kong to live with Francis’ parents Wah On and his mother Lau Yee Moy, while Francis was completing his education at Lin Nam College, Canton.
Francis had taken up photography as a boy in Honolulu and after graduation was active as an organiser of the Hong Kong Photographic Society.
Daisy took up photography in the mid 1940s as her children were older, winning her first gold medal in the Salzberg, Austria International salon in 1952 with a portrait of her daughter Sylvia.
Daisy Wu had had plenty of time to observe amateur photography as well as commercial practise in Francis’s studio which had begun in 1937. Her progress was rapid.
By 1956 she had had 246 prints accepted in 91 international salons, 70 awards and considerable prize money including for a colour photograph in Popular Photography magazine’s 1954 annual competition and an 1958 prize trip to her hometown in Hawaii for an oil coloured photo.
In 1956 Ilford Hong Kong sponsored her solo exhibition of 120 prints at St John’s Cathedral Hall. On 4 August 1956 the reviewer for The Honolulu Star Bulletin devoted his ‘Camera’ column to ’one of the most spectacular rises in international salon photography’.
Wu worked in black and white and hand coloured prints and as well as colour film and slides and was known for animal and insect studies. Her work was included in the British annual Photograms of the Year in 1950 and 1953.
In 1970 she collaborated with Francis on Chinese Beauties: Through the Camera Lens of Francis and Daisy Wu. Published by the Francis Wu studio, Hong Kong but did not publish any books independently.
Daisy was technically adept and diverse she used Hassselblad and Leica as well as occasionally the Rolleiflex and Super D Graflex cameras. She used montage and was an expert colourist as well as embracing colour photography, video and digital work in later years.
Daisy became an Associate of the Photographic Society of America and of the Royal Photographic Societies but enjoyed particular celebrity in the Photographic Society of America (PSA) for whom she undertook a paid lecture tour of the United States in 1957.
In 1994 Winifred W. Brown, FPSA writing Daisy’s obituary in the PSA Journal April 1994 noted her enthusiasm for new technology including video and Apple computer digital manipulation . ‘Daisy will always be remembered as a petite woman, beautifully dressed, smiling, gracious, generous….carrying a camera.’
Daisy and Francis Wu had three daughters and two sons; presently Francis jr runs a website dedicated to Francis. A number of her award winning pictures such as Grandpa’s tale used sons as models.
Daisy Wu is represented in the collections of M+ Hong Kong and the Hong Kong History Museum has Daisy Wu’s photographs: The cameraman [Francis and Francis Jr] and Grandapa’s tale.