This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

《被忽视的逝者》是一个杰出人物讣告系列，这些人物在1851年后离世，当时没有得到时报的讣闻报道。

Nancy Sheung told stories about herself the way she composed her photographs: dramatically, and with careful attention to how she was framed.

常惠珍(Nancy Sheung)讲述自己故事的风格和她构图拍照的风格一样：充满戏剧性，并且格外留意自己如何被框入画面。

She claimed to have worked at an opium den when she was 14 to pay for her education. She said she rode alone on horseback to school, carrying a gun for protection. She recalled long afternoons speeding through Hong Kong in a Fiat 124 Spider convertible in the 1960s.

她自称14岁时曾在鸦片馆工作以支付学费。她说自己曾独自骑马去上学，并带着枪防身。她回忆起20世纪60年代，在漫长的午后，她驾驶着一辆菲亚特124 Spider敞篷车在香港飞驰。

Her family would later debate the details of some of these stories. But whether embroidered or exact, they spoke to the persona Sheung constructed: fearless, modern, impossible to contain.

她的家人后来对其中一些故事的细节提出过争议。但无论这些故事是经过润色还是确有其事，它们都彰显着常惠珍所构建的个人形象：无畏、现代、不受束缚。

In both her self-fashioning and in her photography, Sheung was deeply invested in crafting an image of female autonomy and audacity at a time when women’s lives were constrained by traditional expectations.

无论是在自我塑造还是在摄影作品中，常惠珍都致力于打造一个自主、大胆的女性形象，而在那个时代，女性的生活仍受到传统期望的诸多限制。

In “The Long Haired Girl,” a young woman stands with her back to the camera, her hands on her hips as she looks to the side with a defiant, steely expression. Her hair, braided into two pigtails, stretches down her back and sways to the side as she turns.

在《长发女孩》(The Long Haired Girl)中，一位年轻女性背对镜头，双手叉腰，目光转向一侧，神情挑衅坚毅。她的头发编成两条辫子，垂在背后，随着转身，辫子向一侧摇曳。

Long hair is seen in China as a sacred gift from one’s parents, representing health and devotion to family. Sheung often used hair as both texture and symbol. In “The Gaze,” a woman’s eye peers into the camera out of a nest of hair wrapped around her face.

在中国，长发被视为父母赐予的神圣礼物，象征着健康和对家庭的忠诚。常惠珍经常将头发作为一种质感元素，又作为一种象征。在《凝视》(The Gaze)中，一个女人的眼睛通过缠绕在脸庞的一团发丝凝视着镜头。

“She was very intentional and artistic,” Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres, Sheung’s granddaughter and a curator in California, said in an interview. “These were not documentary photographs. They were art photographs of her own making.”

“她非常有主见，而且很有艺术气质，”常惠珍的孙女、加州策展人庞惠英(Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres)在采访中说。“这些不是纪实摄影。它们是她自己创作的艺术摄影作品。”

Sheung Wai Chun was born on Oct. 4, 1915, in Suzhou, China, near Shanghai. She later adopted the name Nancy, which she used in her travels and international photography submissions.

1915年10月4日，常惠珍出生于中国上海附近的苏州。她后来使用Nancy这个英文名字，在旅行和向国际摄影比赛投稿时使用。

Details about her childhood are sparse. Records give her mother’s name as Kwok Chat; her father’s name is unknown. Girls had limited access to formal education, so Sheung funded her own schooling.

关于她童年的细节很少。记录显示她母亲的名字是郭芝（音）；她父亲的名字不详。当时女孩接受正规教育的机会有限，因此常惠珍靠自己筹措学费完成学业。

She later moved to Guangzhou, where she met Pong Koon Wah, a coal and gas merchant. The couple was married, and settled in Hong Kong in the mid-1930s.

后来她搬到广州，在那里遇到煤炭和煤气商人庞冠华。两人结为夫妻，并于20世纪30年代中期定居香港。

《香港之巅》是常惠珍于1960年代拍摄的作品。她曾游历东亚各地进行摄影创作；多幅作品曾参展并获奖。

Sheung had six children but seemed determined not to disappear into domestic life. Instead — aided by the privilege of having a household staff — she immersed herself in Hong Kong’s cosmopolitan social circles, throwing mahjong gatherings that stretched from sunrise to sundown and cultivating a glamorous, fast-moving life.

常惠珍育有六个孩子，但她似乎下定决心不让自己消失在家庭生活中。得益于拥有家政人员的优渥条件，她全身心地投入到香港这座国际化都市的社交圈中，举办从早到晚的麻将聚会，过着一种光鲜亮丽的快节奏生活。

She saw opportunity in the city’s postwar building boom and started her own construction and architecture firm, Wai Foong Construction, despite having no formal education in the field; she ended up becoming the family’s breadwinner. But by the late 1950s, Hong Kong’s economy had slowed, and many construction projects were halted.

她在战后这座城市的建筑热潮中看到了机遇，尽管没有受过该领域的正规教育，她还是创办了自己的建筑工程公司——惠珍建筑，最终成为家庭的经济支柱。但到了20世纪50年代末，香港经济放缓，许多建筑项目陷入停滞。

Around that time, Sheung attended a luncheon at the Hong Kong Club, where European art photography was on display. In those black-and-white prints, she saw how reality could be captured through the lens of a camera. She had to try it for herself.

大约在那个时候，常惠珍参加了香港会的一场午餐会，那里正在展出欧洲的艺术摄影作品。在那些黑白照片中，她看到了现实如何通过相机镜头被捕捉下来。她决心亲自尝试一下。

In 1960, Sheung, well into her 40s, purchased her first camera, a Rolleiflex. She apprenticed with a local photographer and taught herself how to develop photos and master techniques like dodging and burning, which are used to manipulate select areas of a print. She later converted a bathroom in her home into a darkroom.

1960年，当时已年过40的常惠珍买下了她的第一台相机——一台禄来福来(Rolleiflex)。她拜当地一位摄影师为师，自学冲洗照片，并掌握了减光和加光等用来处理照片局部区域的技巧。后来，她将家里的一个浴室改造成了暗房。

Her experience with architecture helped her identify striking frames.

她在建筑领域的经验帮助她发现了引人注目的构图。

She often photographed stairways, a defining feature of densely-built Hong Kong, where steep hills and cramped apartments pushed life upward. For many residents, especially children, the stairs became gathering places and playgrounds. In “Balloons,” a young boy and girl play against a sliver of open sky above the viewer. The image captures a fleeting moment of childhood wonder.

她经常拍摄楼梯，这是建筑密集的香港的一个标志性特征，陡峭的山丘和拥挤的公寓迫使人们的生活向上延伸。对于许多居民，尤其是孩子们来说，楼梯成了聚会场所和玩耍的地方。在《气球》(Balloons)中，一个小男孩和一个小女孩在观者上方的一线开阔天空下玩耍。这张图片捕捉到了转瞬即逝的童年奇妙时刻。

One of Sheung’s best-known works, “The Pigtail,” features her daughter Annie Pong, who was then 15. Annie poses, wearing a striped shirt, in front of a striped backdrop. A long, black braid tied with a bow is draped over a ledge (also striped), on which she rests her chin.

常惠珍最著名的作品之一《辫子》(The Pigtail)，主角是她当时15岁的女儿安妮·庞。安妮穿着条纹衬衫，在条纹背景前摆好姿势。一条系着蝴蝶结的黑色长辫子搭在一个同样满是条纹的壁架上，她将下巴搁在上面。

The photograph appears composed and serene, but the process behind it was anything but.

这张照片看起来构图精妙、氛围宁静，但其背后的拍摄过程却非如此。

“I didn’t know what I got myself into,” Pong said in an interview. “It was a very long ordeal. I just remember being miserable because it was so hot. My mother said, ‘It will be over soon, then we’ll get lunch.’”

“我当时不知道自己参与了什么，”安妮·庞在接受采访时说。“那是一次非常漫长的煎熬。我只记得因为天气太热，我非常难受。妈妈说，‘马上就拍完了，然后就吃午饭。’”

Sheung joined the Photographic Society of Hong Kong in 1965 and became its vice president in 1970. She took photographs across East Asia; a number of them won prizes and were exhibited around the world, including at the Royal Photographic Society in England.

常惠珍于1965年加入香港摄影学会，并于1970年成为该学会副会长。她曾遍访东亚各地进行拍摄，许多作品屡获殊荣，并在世界各地展出，包括英国皇家摄影学会。

As her artistic career expanded, she relied on live-in workers like nannies, a housekeeper and a chef to free up time for photography. In 1971, when she won an award for one of her photos, a newspaper reporter asked her if she felt like she was neglecting her family in her travels.

随着艺术事业的扩展，她依靠保姆、管家和厨师等住家帮佣来腾出时间进行摄影创作。1971年，当她凭借一张照片获奖时，一位报社记者问她，是否觉得自己四处奔波，冷落了家人。

1960年代末，常惠珍站在香港展览现场，身旁是她的作品。

“I don’t think so,” she responded. “Household chores are usually taken care of by others, so I don’t need to be involved. I can say that none of my daughters were ever embraced more than 10 times when they were young.”

“我不这么觉得，”她回答说。“家务活平时有其他人照料，所以我不需要参与。可以说，我女儿们小的时候，我抱她们都没有超过10次。”

Sheung died of a heart attack on Jan. 17, 1979, while working in her darkroom in her Hong Kong home. She was 64.

1979年1月17日，常惠珍在香港家中暗房工作时突发心脏病去世，享年64岁。

Her photographs have achieved new prominence in recent years as curators have increasingly recognized underappreciated female artists. In 2015, Lumenvisum, a nonprofit in Hong Kong, organized the retrospective “Rare Encounters: Nancy Sheung’s Portraits of Women in the 1960s.”

近年来，随着策展人越来越认可那些被低估的女性艺术家，她的摄影作品获得了新的瞩目。2015年，香港非营利组织光影作坊组织了回顾展《珍影集：常惠珍镜头下的1960年代香港女性》。

“Nancy Sheung was an absolute perfectionist, which can be easily discerned from the selections of subjects, the compositions and tonal controls in her photographs,” the exhibition’s curator, Edwin K. Lai, wrote. “She was always meticulous and articulate, and strived hard to obtain the best and most beautiful results.”

“论摄影风格常惠珍绝对是唯美主义者：无论是选择题材、画面经营、色调调控等各方面，”该展览的策展人黎健强写道。“她都非常严格一丝不苟、力求尽善尽美。”

Much of the renewed attention to Sheung’s work can be traced to Beres, her granddaughter, who has helped preserve and reintroduce her photographs to curators and institutions.

对常惠珍作品的重新关注很大程度上要归功于她的孙女庞惠英，她一直帮助保存这些照片，并将其重新介绍给策展人和艺术机构。

“There really aren’t many heroines in Chinese art,” Beres said in an interview. “Even though she didn’t get the notoriety I think she desired when she was living, to be able to come back and give her a place in this pantheon of great photographers is humbling.”

“中国艺术中真的没有很多女性英雄，”庞惠英在接受采访时说。“尽管她生前未能获得我认为她所渴望的声名，但如今能够重新回来，为她在伟大的摄影家殿堂中赢得一席之地，这让我深感荣幸。”