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Telling a story with pictures

By Vico Lee
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Jun 01, 2003, Page 17

In the twilight filtering through the window into the small basement coffee shop La Boheme, illustrators Tsao Ruei-chi (曹瑞芝) and Huang Yu-chin (黃郁欽) are busy hanging their drawings in preparation for their joint exhibition Love and Photo Studio, which opens today. The exhibits are manuscripts from their first two books -- Soliloquy of Love (愛情獨白) and The Blue Photo Studio in H Town (H鎮的藍色寫真館), which were released last month.

Huang and Tsao have each authored over a dozen hand-made picture books, for which they also wrote the texts, but it has taken almost a decade for their work to attract the attention of a publishing house. What makes their work unusual is that, although they are illustrated books, they are not designed for children. Although there's been no lack of illustrated children's books by Taiwanese authors, picture books designed for readers other than children have been dominated by foreign-language translations.

Illustration by Tsao Ruei-chi. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE PICTURE BOOK CLUB

Huang and Tsao are leaders of Picture Book Club (圖畫書俱樂部), a group of 20 hand-made book enthusiasts who regularly show their work at Cafe La Boheme and hold group exhibitions every year. Since 1996, they have held regular meetings to view and comment on each other's books and brainstorm for new ideas.

The Picture Book Club is one of seven such clubs currently active in Taiwan.

We Are Fun (繪本FUN團), another of those groups, has seen its several members publish children's and other picture books in the past two years including Deng Mai-yun's (鄧美雲) Picture Book DIY (繪本創作DIY), which has become standard reading for people interested in hand-made illustrated books.

The exhibitions held by these groups can really be an eye-opening experience. In Picture Book Club's last group show last year, Huang showed books of fairy tales for the grown-ups, accompanied by paper-cuttings that served as illustrations. Other group members made story books with three-dimensional illustrations, devices inside pages for readers to play with, exquisite paper sculptures and even illustrations of noodles that actually felt soft and elastic.

Until recently, the high cost of color printing has kept these works available to only a niche audience who frequent such exhibitions. This was how Tsao and Huang were discovered, and they say that the interest shown by publisher Chen Yu-hang (陳雨航) is due to a trend towards publishing books without a high word count but with lots of pictures. "These are thought to be easier to digest by a busy public," they said.

Chen, founder of the famous literature-oriented publisher Rye Field Publishing (麥田出版社), and head of Yi Fang Publishing (一方出版社) decided to set up a new label, called Words and Pictures (圖話書), under which to publish Huang's, Tsao's and other illustrated works. In total, three works by local authors have been released to date, and translations of three imported works are currently underway.

"It is a worthwhile experiment," said Chen, who saw their books by accident when he was having a coffee in La Boheme.

"My publishing house is basically literature-oriented but nowadays I really need my publications to have illustrations. I found their [Huang's and Tsao's] works appealing both in their text and their pictures, so I thought I would try them out," Chen said. "Even literary books now have to include something visual. [Novels] whose pages are narrowly printed with line after line of text have lost their appeal. Simple decorations on the margins are not enough either. Full page illustrations are necessary. Young people, in particular, like to see pictures next to words. This is the era of the visual."

Chen went on to point out that being good at drawing alone probably won't get anyone a book deal. "The Blue Photo Studio in H Town is a well-written novel in its own right. With these heavily blue illustrations, the whole atmosphere is there," Chen said.

Even a few years back, Huang would probably have had to publish his books in black and white, if they were published at all. "Ten years ago, no one printed books in color. No publisher wanted to spend money on illustrations because printing them was so much more expensive than now. There was also not the demand for such books," Tsao said.

Even Lucy Chen, Tsao's mentor and one of Taiwan's most respected illustrators, has only had a couple of works published. Her reputation stems primarily from illustrating literature pages in daily papers.

In recent years, the cost of color printing has fallen dramatically, making publishers more willing to print all-color illustrations. The success of illustrator and writer Jimmy Liao (幾米) since his first book in 1998, has bucked a trend in the publishing industry with his continued popularity. Jimmy's best-selling works -- simple stories and European-style illustrations that appeal to young office workers in big cities -- have been adapted for screen, stage play and even music videos. His success has led publishers to seek out more people who can both write and draw.

So far, few newcomers can match Jimmy's fame or sales. Among the seven books by the illustrator after 2000, the most popular in commercial terms -- A Garden in My Heart (我的心中每天開出一朵花) -- which sold around 175, 000 copies, according to Locus Publishing (大塊文化).

Locus is a self-styled specialist in the publication of illustration books, but none of its other authors can match the sales for Garden. M &M Mook by well-known comic book authors Chang Miao-ru (張妙如) and Hsu Mei-yi (徐玫怡), the publisher's second best-selling item, sold around 45,000 copies.

Tsao and Huang's books fared no better, although Chen attributed that to the recent SARS outbreak.

Despite that, the hunt for new talent goes on. "We will continue publishing illustration books by new authors, and promote illustrated books as a characteristic of the publishing house," said Lo Shi-jing (羅世京) of Locus.

"At present, we get to know new authors partly through the recommendation of Jimmy and other writers but also through the authors themselves sending in their work. If they have a style of their own, we are willing to publish them," Lo said.

For most picture book makers, presenting their work to publishers is far more difficult than creating the works themselves. "It's very difficult to call [the publishers] up and tell them about my work. That's true for most of us," said Wu You-chin, a member of the Picture Book Club. "It's easier to let my books [speak for me] at exhibitions."

Almost all established picture book writers like Red Capsule (紅膠囊) and Cola King (可樂王) started as illustrators for newspapers. With more and more newspapers opting to use the much cheaper CD image albums instead of paying for illustrators, the members of the club expect exhibitions like theirs to become the new springboard to publication.

Regular venues for exhibitions of handmade picture books in Taipei:

Picture Writer (圖畫作家), a picture books library at 5F, 16, Alley 33, Lane 216, Chunghsiao E. Rd, Sec. 4, Taipei. (台北市忠孝東路四段216巷33弄16號5樓)

Mi Tsang Cafe (米倉音像食館), 24, Chaochou St., Taipei (台北市潮州街24號)

Trio Cafe (三重奏咖啡館), 44, Tai-shun St., Taipei (台北市泰順街2巷44號)

Kuroshio Cafe (黑潮咖啡), 9-1, Lane 141, Hoping E. Rd., Sec 1, Taipei (台北市和平東路一段141巷9-1號)

Cafe La Boheme (波西米亞人), B1, 76, Changan W. Rd., Taipei (台北市長安西路76號B1)
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