In the 1950s and 60s no photographer in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia or even the world would fail to identify the "King of Gold Fish Photographers" as Cheung Yu-chiu 張汝釗. The quantity of film and the amount of time he devoted to photographing gold fish cannot be estimated, but his rewards were equally great.
In 1952 - the very year in which the Photographic Society of America started to keep worldwide records in a systematic way - Cheung Yu-chiu was in eighth place in the monochrome pictorial
photography division. He was ranked first in the world for the four years form 1953 to 1956, an astonishing record which has not yet been broken after all these years. It goes without saying that he won many other prizes and gained many titles.
Life magazine carried a piece on Cheung Yu-chiu with illustrations of several of his gold
fish photographs. Other than gold fish, Cheung Yu-chiu's subjects include landscape and people, and he excels in still life.
Cheung Yu-chiu takes production with great seriousness. He liked to play snooker with Kan Hing-fook in the intervals between working in the dark room, and would take the opportunity of discussing the results with him when the prints were ready.