Yang attributes to instinct his uncanny ability to engage his subjects and capture their mood and spirit. Talking to him about technique and style, it becomes apparent that he was striving toward this higher goal from the start. "I worked fast, never staying in one place too long," he says. "If you take too long to take a picture of someone, you lose the naturalness of the shot. When you see a good shot, good light or composition, you must pull the trigger and take it. Some people might call this a snapshot. I call it not missing the shot."
Ironically, despite Yang's decisiveness behind the lens, his collection of photos was almost never seen by anyone. "I had thousands of negatives in storage," he says. "My wife is the one who saved them over these forty years; otherwise I might have lost them all or thrown them out."
It was just last year that he started sifting back through his collection and realizing that he might have something important to share. From there the idea of a book evolved.
But while Yang's main intention is to present a side of Taiwan that many have forgotten, others believe that his work means much more. One such person is Juan I-jong (阮義忠), chief editor of Photographers International Magazine. That Yang remains relatively unknown among local professional photographers, says Juan, is a personal embarrassment. "I published Yang's work in my magazine in a direct attempt to make up for this oversight. In time he will be acknowledged for contributing not only to the culture of Taiwan, but to the history of photography as well."
But, all said, Yang just wants to remind people about the way things were in a simpler time. "I guess I'm older now and this makes me want to leave something behind a legacy. I'm not making money from this book," he says. "I really just want to show people that there was a time when the days of summer didn't feel so hot and the breeze felt fresh."
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