How Was Your Dream?

A photobook on the 2019 Hong Kong protests that takes surveillance, and the protesters' inventive countermeasures, as its subject.

Thaddé Comar spent three months in the city and made around ten thousand photographs, which he spent several years working through after returning to France. The book runs full-bleed images on glossy paper and prints them with neon Pantone inks, so the pages read closer to fashion print than to press coverage. It follows the equipment on both sides: lasers, umbrellas, masks and glasses worn against identification, riot gear, and the cameras and media presence that feed the coverage. Portraits of protesters were made with care not to expose them. The title comes from a phrase protesters used online to discuss their activity under cover of dreams. Comar has not been able to show the book or the photographs in Hong Kong, given the risk to the people pictured. Mörel published it in 2022 in an edition of 1,000, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards.

Comar (b. 1993) lives between Paris and Lausanne and works across commissioned, editorial and personal projects.