Photography was early recognised as one of the weapons with which Hong Kong could combat negative reportage and entrenched misconceptions regarding prevailing conditions. By building up a photo library second to none, as a freely-available resource for visiting correspondents, the department set out to present a positive view of a still emerging economy, feeling its way out of squatter huts and flatted factories into better planned resettlement and industrial estates.

Some of its longest-serving officers have left their mark in the department's photographic studios, often producing pictures of salon quality to grace the pages of the government's best-selling annual reports and its numerous other publications. Among the earliest of these veterans were Gatlin Lin, David Au, David Ching and C C Tang, who donned raincoats to patrol the streets in the vilest of typhoons and produced some of their best work under difficult conditions.

They particularly excelled in recording the spirit of ordinary people, many of whom held down two jobs and snatched whatever sleep they could, either while commuting or in a rented tiered bedspace occupied on a shift basis and located as close as possible to at least one workplace.

GIS cameramen were particularly skilled in capturing the winsome moods of children, then more than half the population. Whether emerging spotlessly clean from squatter huts to study in rooftop schools, or contriving to amuse themselves as best they could away from crowded streets, these youngsters were visually emblematic of the buoyancy of a challenged but resilient community. As evidence of all this engaging photographic evidence, GIS bequeathed to posterity an early pictorial essay entitled City of Children.

Valuable groundwork for an increasingly comprehensive photographic archive was laid by Frank Rogers, an expatriate officer who joined the department in its infancy and who has left behind his own photographic legacy in an album simply entitled Hong Kong, which he produced in the early '60s for the newly-established Hong Kong Tourist Association.

The Hong Kong Annual Report 1961 is surprisingly and uncharacteristically specific in regard to the detail of the GIS photographic output: "Each set deals with a different subject and normally contains between one and two dozen 10'' x 8'' glossy prints. Each picture has a comprehensive caption of between 100 and 200 words, enabling them to be used either singly or as a 'spread'. These picture sets are proving of value to overseas publications, both for immediate use and for picture libraries for use with future stories about Hong Kong.

That year the department acquired the services of Nigel John Vale Watt, who was to become Murray's successor in the top post, and who himself came from a photographic background, via colonial service in Africa and Aden.

Watt recalls that when he arrived in Hong Kong early in 1961, aboard the passenger liner Oriana, Murray came aboard to meet him. "He was a rather beefy looking gentleman, with a florid complexion and a mass of white hair. He said 'I might as well tell you, Watt, so that we get things straight from the start, you're not the man I asked for'." Who exactly Murray had in mind was never divulged, but the relationship that developed from this unpromising beginning set the stage for a smooth succession two years later, when Watt resolved to preserve the goals and objectives set by his formidable predecessor.

Since Hong Kong had long exerted a special fascination for outsiders, who saw it through Hollywood eyes as an exotic locale filled with mystery and intrigue, it was important to dispel old misconceptions and replace them with a new respect for what was being achieved here. And since the West was targeted as the principal marketplace for Hong Kong's expanding and increasingly sophisticated product range, it was even more important that this reassessment should take account of the territory's brave new role on the stage of global commerce.

The image Hong Kong set out to portray was of a surprising new 'can do' powerhouse of industry, whose tiny size packed a considerable wallop. Much emphasis was placed in these early days on overseas output, in the form of syndicated feature articles on a wide range of topics, each with an accompanying photo spread. The marketing strategy for this enterprise was carefully devised by Bill Fish, recruited from the Straits Times in Singapore to take charge of the editorial output.

Aware from his own experience as a newspaper man that no self-respecting editor would knowingly accept free hand-outs from an official government agency, Fish decided that at all costs the materials marketed should be free of any suspicion of propagandist intent.

His small team of writers were encouraged to write positively, with a semblance of objectivity, on topics that would bolster rather than detract from Hong Kong's image. And since it would seem strange if all this material kept appearing under the same limited range of bylines, he also encouraged them to invent a variety of pseudonyms, as if their articles were originating from different sources.

Entering into the spirit of the thing, Keith Robinson selected a whole range of exotic alter-egos under which to masquerade, while Peter Moss was translated most frequently into Frank Watson or Ishmael Iskander. Later recruits into the ranks, including Adam Lynford, Brian Hickman and Peter Iliffe-Moon, ventured their own variations on the name game.

Even more to the point, it was essential that none of this material should find its way directly into editorial in-trays directly from government sources or bearing the GIS imprimatur. A series of middle agents had therefore to be found in the respective target territories who would proffer it - for whatever commission they might make - as though it had stemmed from assorted stables of freelance writers.

The gambit proved remarkably successful, particularly in the case of GIS photographs, whole categories of which, classified under all the most commonly-wanted subject headings, found their way into the archives of the world's major newspapers and magazines, from which they could be readily retrieved every time someone needed a piece on Hong Kong. Watt's own photographic background proved invaluable to this exercise, for he had links with Camera Press in London, who took on the role of marketing the GIS output.

For GIS it was the product that mattered; not the credit for it.