Taiwan Today

Creative departures from traditional salon photography capture the changing 1980s in a striking exhibition by nine Taiwan photographers. The rapid social and political changes over the past decade have been paralleled by equally striking transformations in the field of photography. Taiwan's photographers have made substantial changes in both their photographic techniques and their selection of subjects. The shifts are clearly illustrated in a black-and-white photo exhibition by nine Taiwan photographers first held in late 1990 at Eslite Vision Art Gallery in Taipei and now scheduled for display in San Francisco at The Eye Gallery (January-February 1991) . Called Meeting and Parting, the exhibition does considerably more than fulfill its rather understated catalogue claim, written by photographer Chang Chao-tang (張照堂). He writes that the photographs illustrate "the fundamental pattern by which we [photographers] experience this world, " explained as coming across a scene, raising the view finder to the eye, adjusting the focus and exposure, shooting the picture, then bidding farewell and leaving the scene behind. In fact, the scenes are not left behind at all. They are captured in compelling pictures that not only illustrate the creativity of these seven male and two female photographers (all but two are around thirty), but also give vivid insights into the Taiwan of the 1980s. It is a forceful demonstration of the pace of the times to look at photos taken but five or ten years ago and feel as though they belong to a distant past. The impact of the exhibition is strengthened further by the range of creativity represented in the exhibition, which puts to rest any question about whether Taiwan's photographers have moved away from the techniques of "picturesque style" to search for "pure beauty," as advocated by the noted photographer Long Chin-san (郎靜山) over the past three decades [see FCR, December 1990]. "Uniformity is not our ultimate goal," says Chien Yung-pin (簡永彬), a photographer and owner of a Taipei art gallery, who along with Chang organized the exhibition. And even the briefest glance at the collection shows that the creative impulse is indeed varied among the Image-9 photographers, as they call themselves. The group of nine (originally ten, one dropped out before the exhibition was mounted) came together in early 1989 in response to an invitation from the Contemporary Photographers Association in Peking. The association asked Taiwan photographers to organize a collection of their recent work for exhibition on the Mainland. "They were shocked to see our pictures," Chang says, "because they had long held the view that Taiwan produced only salon or reportorial photographs. " Because the ROC government was beginning to encourage cultural exchanges across the Taiwan Straits, Chang and Chien pulled together the Image-9 group. Each photographer selected several of his favorite works, then Chang made the final selection after extensive consultations. But the massacre of student demonstrators in Tienanmen Square forced the cancellation of the exhibition. It was subsequently rescheduled for Taipei and San Francisco. The exhibition shows that Taiwan's photographers have come a long way since the almost brutal attention to realism first championed in the 1960s by Cheng Sang-hsi, Chang's mentor. Cheng's hometown portraits of Keelung on Taiwan's northern coast expressed a deep empathy for rural folk and their day-to-day activities in the fields, at festivals, and in the village. But even at this time, there were strong crosscurrents of thought among Taiwan's young photographers, many of whom were refining their skills in photojournalism, much as Long Chin-san had done five decades earlier. Through the 1960s and early 1970s, Western intellectual trends had considerable impact on how photographers approached their work. For example, many of them were attracted to the existential philosophies of Sartre and Camus, and to Beckett's theater of the absurd. The emphases on alienation and the absurdities of modern life hit responsive chords for young intellectuals in Taiwan, including Chang, who was then in his twenties. "To express these feelings, I turned against realistic techniques," he says. "Instead of the 35mm camera, I bought a 20mm wide-angle lens to produce an exaggerated effect by enlarging the foreground and diminishing the background. But the results looked contrived. The distorted physical features were so overwhelming that they dominated the effect on the viewer. There was no spirit to the picture. I couldn't even recognize my original concept." By the mid 1970s, a Taiwan version of modernism was inf1uencing the work of local photographers, prompting a shift from "narcissistic egoism and morbid self-pity," in Chang's words, toward a more intense focus on the subject. The orientation quickly evolved into a new level of social consciousness, one that manifested a concern for recognizing and preserving local culture. What stood in front of the camera became more important than the photographer. Chang's pictures illustrate this shift toward social realism. "I redirected my lens toward persons, their surroundings, and the everyday activities of life," he says. "More important, I began to care about what I was seeing through the lens." Chang moved away from what he terms "expressing reality in a superficial way," and sought instead the "underlying mysteries, strangeness, and incommunicability of life." He eventually reached a new level of interpretation: "A good work of art should be a successful fusion of the concrete with the abstract," he says. "It should be a mixture of the real with the unreal." The viewpoint is illustrated by Chang's Uncle Wang, Lin Family Garden, where an old man in a dark Western suit, his head bowed, cries into a checked handkerchief. In the background is a boarded up shack. The man's worn-out fedora dominates the foreground, covering his face. His hands indicate advanced age, but there is no clue to the source of his distress. The turbulent 1980s provided rich material for the Image-9 group: accelerated economic growth with a concomitant shift toward urbanization; a general increase in wealth for the majority of society along with rising social and economic expectations; the rise of a political opposition and its legalization after the lifting of martial law; a near simultaneous rejection of traditional social and ethical patterns and a rediscovery of their importance. The changes swept all aspects of life. Meeting and Parting provides a sensitive visual record of these times. As the photographs illustrate, the I980s were in many ways a strange and mysterious period because of their quiet turbulence-sweeping changes without violent upheaval. Yet there is a degree of violence in these shots, capturing a traditional spirit that has been severely injured. For example, look at the Chien Yung-pin photo of a man with fingers awkwardly interlocked and with a wild, uncertain eye peering through the metal grate of a folding door. Counterpointing the man on an adjacent cement wall is an unhappy Klee-like sketch in chalk. The figure, with a tear falling from one eye, incorporates three random splashes of paint; one becomes a furrowed brow, another a downturned mouth, the last an arrow in the heart. Yet Chien's eye finds gentleness as well, and in a cluttered and unpretentious place. In the apartment of the Dumb Lovers, the camera catches how eloquent eyes, hands, and the inclination of the body can be for a young couple incapable of speech. The tenderness is intensely emotional without a touch of condescension or sentimentality. "I do a lot of thinking before I start," Chien says. "I like direct, honest contact with people. In everyday meeting and parting, and from dynamic interaction, I learn a lot of things. My intuition tells me when to press the shutter. " A strong social consciousness marks the works exhibited by photojournalist Liang Cheng-chu (梁居正), especially in the eyes and postures of two mine workers in Hsinchu and Neihu (the titles refer to places located in northern Taiwan). Viewers are drawn into the world of these intense, soot-covered men and are forced to speculate about their lives. The photos bring to mind Avedon's black-and-white photographs of carnies, where the carnival setting contrasts heavily with broodingly complex expressions. The photographs by Kao Chung-li (高重黎) illustrate how new creative directions can be permutations of old concepts. In his series entitled Body oj A Human Being, Kao rearranges parts of the human body to represent abstract views of the world held in ancient and traditional China. "The photographs are my interpretations of the Five Elements (wu hsing, 五行 ) ─ metal, wood, water, fire, and earth," he explains. "For example, I symbolize metal with two bald male heads resting on two female knees, a symmetrical balance that magnifies the smooth and hard surface of metal. Wood is presented as two feet curled up in the shape of a flower, an association with trees." Like the interplay of the Five Elements in classical cosmology, there is continuing tension and interplay among the body parts in each photo. Although representational and fragmented portrayals of the human body can be found in Western photography, the form is still experimental in Taiwan. Kao painstakingly plans his photographs, making preliminary sketches of different combinations of body parts that seem best to express his ideas. "I never feel secure," he says. And when it comes to filling in the outlines, Kao meets more resistance. "The Chinese are very conservative," he says. "They are uneasy about posing without their clothes. Oftentimes, I can find models only in beer houses or piano bars." The photographs, which are far from expressing the beauty of the human body, are at once tense, stark, and strange. The series is perhaps Kao's last affair with the camera. He plans to return to his first love: sculpture. "I am tired of photography, " he says. Kao's decision to shift his medium is not particularly unusual. In Taiwan, art dealers and collectors concentrate on painting and sculpture, and most of them do not regard photography as an art. Although attitudes are changing in the art field as well as among the general public, many aspiring photographers in Taiwan, as elsewhere, have to give up and seek other lines of work or resign themselves to less creative commercial photography. "Everything hinges on the photographer's determination," Chang says. But he is upbeat about the long-range possibilities. "Even if circumstances force some photographers to quit, they will always be able to pick up their cameras again as long as the desire to create never burns out." There is every indication that the environment of the 1990s will be even better for photographic creativity. After decades of limitations-some great, some frustratingly trivial- Taiwan's liberalized social and political environment has ushered in a major shift in tone, especially since the lifting of martial law in 1987. The years are past when photographers have to worry that their works cannot be exhibited because of political and cultural sensitivities to controversial issues or sexual explicitness. The change in attitudes toward photography is illustrated by the Meeting and Parting exhibition itself. Not only was it to be part of the recently expanded cultural exchanges across the Taiwan Straits, but it also was funded by grants from private corporations and the government's Council for Cultural Planning and Development (CCPD). This environment of change and tolerance allows photographers to explore formerly taboo areas. For example, the works that Hou Tsung-hui (侯聰慧) chose for the exhibition deal with insanity, confinement, and social injustice. In his Longfa Tang series, the subjects are patients in the Longfa Tang insane asylum in Kaohsiung. Hou, who occasionally suffers from depression, has first-hand experience of the environment: he once committed himself to the institution for several months. Hou explains that oppression, suffering, and ecstasy are life's inevitable experiences. "There is no need to deny this," he says, and his photographs are an invitation to viewers to compare their personal experience with those of people living in the world of the insane. There is no indication of the setting in Hou's asylum series. And even if the faces are devoid of life, an eerie power still comes through in the photographs. In one picture, the camera looks up at three sodden men against a dark incline of what seems to be a sheet metal roof. Eventually, viewers look away from these troubled faces and move to the bottom half of the picture, where they see the chains that shackle and link the men's hands. It is stirring photographs like this that enable Image-9 to present an eloquent and vivid panorama of the often confusing changes that swept Taiwan in the past decade, a period through which people suffered, endured, and ultimately prospered. Chang Chao-tang sees the exhibit as an epilogue to the times and the beginning of another period of photographic growth: "We not only bid farewell to the social turmoil of the past decade, but also say good-bye to our old selves." The photographic tradition, like Taiwan itself, continues to grow and mature.