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As Taiwanese society gradually adapted to new political realities in the 1970s and 1980s, artists and scholars often explored Taiwan's locality and history, as well as changing culture and identity. Despite the pressures of civil society, the creative energy of the two decades has flourished, during which the art of photography as a visual medium has played a particularly prominent role in bringing together a variety of creative practices and platforms across social fields. Photographers have created a unique work that blends experimental art, photojournalism, social documentary and other art genres, helping to re-examine the nature of the medium itself amid the clamor.
"In and Out Series - Xinzhuang" Zhang Zhaotang Photography
Taiwanese pioneer photographer Zhang Zhaotang often looks back on his artistic career with the word "find the way", and the inspiration for the theme of the "find the way" exhibition also comes from this. "Finding the way" means finding the way, which means that the photographer travels through the mountains and rivers to capture the colorful human customs, and also means that the artist tirelessly thinks about a new independent way forward through photographic experiments. The various creative styles are as intricate and eclectic as the winds: the "documentary" images are directly expressive and make a vigorous sound, while the surreal images of the phantom capture the self-evident reality.
"In and Out Series - Itabashi" Zhang Zhaotang Photography
"In and Out Series - Hsinchu Five Finger Mountain" Zhang Zhaotang Photography
This exhibition presents 35 photographic works by twelve artists, most of which are in the collection of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. This exhibition is the sequel to the Australian National University's 2015 exhibition "Inter- Faces of Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s", in collaboration with the National Museum of History. Many of the exhibits occupy an iconic place in the history of Taiwanese photography. This exhibition deliberately highlights the personal experiences and practices of various photographers in order to present the diverse spectrum of photographic practice at that time. Some photographers are friends with each other, collaborate seamlessly, and exhibit together, but the works on display cannot be easily classified as a specific artistic "movement" or genre, nor can they be simply understood as a response to political change. In view of this, these images have a rich fluidity.
"Body and Soul Series - 2" Takashi Ri photography
"Flesh and Soul Series - 7" Takashi Ri photography
The opening and closing of this exhibition highlight the centrality of the individual body in this place of fluid connection. The headless body and masked face of Zhang Zhaotang's late 1960s classic "In and Out" series are the theater embodiments of anxiety, grief and boredom, while twenty years later, in Gao Chongli's body and soul series, the personal body is still a parasitic place for identity conflicts and colonial, economic and sexual violence. This strangeness and intimacy is overwhelming. Contrary to the popular trends of salon and documentary photography, Zhang Zhaotang was deeply influenced by surrealism and absurdist literature and art in the early days, and in the strongly conservative 1960s "In and Out" series, Zhang Zhaotang expressed his anger, loss and absurdity through photography. Banqiao (1962) is one of Zhang Zhaotang's most iconic works, depicting a headless figure, like a ghost in the distance. In 1984, Gao Chongli went to report on the Haishan mine in Taiwan as a photojournalist, an experience that made him realize the ability of images to reproduce and restore violence, while also making it easier to be consumed. Witnessing the devastated mine, as well as the frantic search of rescuers and the stench of corpses, Gao Chongli described the shock at that time. In Flesh and Soul, he presents the flesh as a strange, primitive vessel between flesh and stone, organic and inorganic, without a clear age or gender identity.
Man and Land - Xu Hai by Nguyen Ngoc Thi Trung Photography
Man and Land - Dona, Nguyen Ngy Trung Photography
"Man and Land - Tu Pagoda" Nguyen Ngy Trung Photography
The work of Nguyen Yi-chung and Wang Xin can be interpreted in terms of the richness and complexity of Taiwan's localization movement in the 1970s. This ushered in an era of portrait photography controversy. In Nguyen Ngễng's most iconic work, Man and Land, The Sea of Xuhai (1980), he captures the carefree teenager doing a backflip: the black-and-white contrast of land and sky becomes a dramatic stage. "The Playing Boy" is a common theme in Nguyen Yi-chung's work, which highlights a space in which joy and the tenacity of life dominate an era surrounded by a variety of uncertainties; in contrast, photographer Wang Xin's most representative work comprehensively depicts the village life of contemporary Taiwanese aborigines. Wang Xin's work focuses on both individuals and groups, and never shys away from the complex impact of modernization on contemporary community culture.
"Lanyu Goodbye Series - 86" Wang Xin Photography
"Lanyu Goodbye Series - 20" Wang Xin Photography
"Lanyu Goodbye Series - 54" Wang Xin Photography
The portraits containing their own ethnographic style are very different from the elegant portraits of artists and literati scholars taken by Zhuang Ling and Xie Chunde, and both sides express their own opinions. Perhaps in response to Salon photography, Zhuang Ling advocated a "natural and authentic" approach in his photographic practice, avoiding artificial lighting and sets. Rather than capturing a broad sense of "life," Zhuang Ling's black-and-white portraits often reflect a sense of closeness to the subject; many of Xie Chunde's photographic series appear to be struggling with local culture. He conducted meticulous, long-term fieldwork to explore the life experiences of Taiwanese, including series such as "My Land and My People" (1979), "The Face of the Times" (1986) and "Homeland" (1988).
"Hongtong" Zhuang Ling Photography
"Chen Da" Zhuang Ling Photography
"Face of the Times Series - Lin Huaimin" Xie Chunde Photography
"Face of the Times Series - Ling Mingsheng" Xie Chunde Photography
If Zhuang Ling and Xie Chunde painted (and thus defined) the cultural landscape in front of them, Jian Yongbin and He Jingtai took portraits of marginalized people and nameless people, using the uninhibited power of the photographic medium to advocate a more inclusive post-society vision, adding the voice of the common people to the high history dominated by the political and cultural elites.
Between 1981 and 1988, Jian Yongbin spent eight years photographing the third section of Xinyi Road in Taipei. At the time, the area was widely recognized as an urban slum with close ties to criminals and gamblers, and the project captured the constant changes in this complex neighborhood on Section 3 of Xinyi Road in Taipei. At the same time, Jian Yongbin also produced a change in photography in this project, that is, from a simple recording tool to a medium for self-expression. As a fellow photographer who focuses on marginalized people, Ho Ching-tai once said that as a journalist, he is familiar with successful social and business people, but this prompted him to pay attention to those who are unfortunate. In Shadowed Life, Ho jingtai takes portraits of "low-level" figures in Taipei society after the end of the lifting of martial law. Rather than attempting to reveal the difficult circumstances faced by these people, Ho's portrait photography conveys a fragile dignity but by no means pity and insists on the "right to be recognized" of these neglected populations.
"LOVE" Jane Yongbin Photography
"Dumb Lover" Jian Yongbin Photography
"Puppet" Jian Yongbin Photography
"Urban Bottom Series - Old Lady Fu" He Jingtai Photography
"Urban Bottom Series - Liu Jinzhong" He Jingtai Photography
"Urban Bottom Series - Xu Reckless" He Jingtai Photography
Exhibition Title: Finding the Way: Taiwanese Photography from 1970-1980
Exhibition time: 2021.7.30-10.28
Venue: Fellows Lane, Australian National University, Building 188
This article was compiled and edited by Feng Rui.
Editor-in-Charge: Liang Yanjia
Proofreader: Yan Zhang