Romain Jaquet-Lagrèze was focusing on photographing Hong Kong's architecture in 2014 when a small movement in the still sunrise caught his eye. It was a resident fixing an antenna. This brief moment drew him in to focus his photography on an area of the city unseen from below: Hong Kong's rootops, where residents garden, relax, hang laundry and live parts of their lives. 

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Jaquet-Lagrèze started seeking out the oldest districts of Hong Kong, like Kowloon, where low-rise buildings can be found. Many low-rises are being torn down in the heavily populated areas to make room for taller, more modern buildings, which, once built, may be too expensive for the current occupants to rent. 

(MORE: Unique Views of Hong Kong by Romain Jacquet-Lagrèze)

"Due to the small size of apartments in Hong Kong and the lack of public parks inside the densest parts of the city, people have to adapt and make use of any available space," the photographer told weather.com. "In many old buildings, the rooftop happens to be unlocked and anyone from the building can access it. So naturally people would go there and do the things that they would do in parks or balconies in other cities, for example, drying laundry, gardening, chatting with neighbors, doing sport or even walking their dogs."

While many of the surrounding buildings look to be in or near disrepair, you can see life continue on these rooftops. A shirtless man pumps out push-ups. A young boy skips rope. 

"In this city, life can be quite hard due to the high price of housing. It forces many people to live in very small apartments in comparison to any other city," Jaquet-Lagrèze explained. "However, I didn't want my photos to be purely negative. I wanted to show how people adapt to this lifestyle and the way they make use of the space they find on rooftops. I want to show how people can feel the fleeting moment of quietness, joy or contemplation when living in a tough environment. I believe we can always find beauty and peace in small things."

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Jaquet-Lagrèze, who has been living in Hong Kong for eight years, spends time scoping out rooftops with a good vantage point of other rooftops. He says it takes patience to wait for a scene of rooftop activities. The photographer describes himself as an "urban contemplator, brooding on the city's rooftops, hoping and waiting to capture things of interest." He is careful not to invade people's privacy, careful not to focus too closely, capturing only what people are doing in the open air, though often unnoticed by the public.

Jaquet-Lagrèze said that most, if not all, of the rooftops are communal, like courtyards in the sky. 

"I think that the special topography of this city, composed mainly of islands, mountains and very few flat lands, is the main cause of the uniqueness of Hong Kong. Some parts of the land are extremely developed with very high desity of people living there, while other areas are totally empty with only jungle covering them. All these extreme contrasts are making the city and its population grow and evolve in a unique way which can be witnessed through multiple angles," Jaquet-Lagrèze explained. He considers his work a record of how people make use of available space in a cramped city. 

The photographer isn't sure what his next project will be, but he knows it will be about Hong Kong. "This city still inspires me very much," he said. 

For more of Jaquet-Lagrèze's work, visit his instagram page. 

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