Introduction

Images contain tremendous strength. They are one of the important means of conveying messages and creating alternative epistemic experiences for us to understand ourselves and the world. Thanks to the Internet and the widespread coverage offered by social media, the production and reception of images has become increasingly influential for political debates and social movements. The high turnout for the Umbrella Movement in the fall of 2014 was to a large extent triggered by widespread images of the violent use of pepper spray upon non-violent civic participants. Images of a large group of protesters wearing surgical facemasks and raising their hands against the riot police's tear gas brought Hong Kong into the spotlight of the international media. In his essay on the arts and the Occupy Movement, Mitchell argues that it is the “verbal-visual image that unites revolutionary movements from the Arab Spring to occupy Wall Street” (2012: 11). The Umbrella Movement shares this feature, attracting global attention through a series of shocking images that captured the unexpected evolution of the social movement in Hong Kong. Since the first few days of the movement, the “umbrella” became the iconic object signifying non-violent resistance against regime violence, as well as constituting the rhetoric for naming the occupy movement itself. Protesters’ non-violent display of civil disobedience—by holding umbrellas or posting hands-up gestures in various “confrontation scenes” against the police—was a self-conscious bodily expression that exhibited their resistance. Indeed, these were examples of spontaneous civic participation that required immense courage.