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Different shades of sadness

By Max Woodworth
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Aug 17, 2003, Page 19

The world of the manic depressive is a painfully small, self-indulgent and inwardly focused one, but it's not without beauty, as one can tell from observing Lane Chen's (陳亦楓) photos.

Chen was diagnosed with severe depression in 1998 and since then has used photography as a form of therapy.

"I'm especially sensitive to color. The subjects of the photos are almost irrelevant. For me, color, or blends of colors stir emotions and help me to make sense retrospectively of what I happened to be feeling when I took the photo," Chen said at the opening of his solo exhibition "colors I saw" at TIVAC yesterday.

For this reason, the 23 photos on exhibit don't share a recognizable theme, but certainly share a uniformly somber atmosphere. Each shot is taken with the edges fading into a faint blur, creating an impression of looking at the world through the eyes of a heavily sedated person stumbling through the city. This effect is intentional, Chen said, so that the images reflect his experience of his surroundings when struck by his depression.

For Lane Chen, color matters more than subject matter. PHOTOS COURTESY OF TIVAC

Shots of a betel nut juice-splattered sidewalk, an underground pedestrian walkway, a shopping mall hallway, the side of a bland Taipei apartment building are completely banal sights that, through Chen's computer touch-ups to enrich the colors, become quite arresting in their emotional impact.

Chen also takes photos of his daughter, whose sunny, carefree smile betrays a complete obliviousness to her father's mental state and underscores the artist's own dark perspective on the world.

According to Chen, the therapeutic effect of photography occurs when he arranges and sorts through his photos, and not while taking the shots. He's in the habit of carrying a camera with him at all times so that during the course of a day he can shoot up to three rolls of film mostly of "nothing in particular, just whatever I happen to be looking at." After developing the film he then sifts through the stills and waits to see which ones stir memories of powerful emotions.

Chen's varying shades of sad don't always contain the same emotional punch, but are nonetheless an obviously genuine record of painful experience.

"Colors I saw" is on show until Sept. 4. TIVAC is located at 1F, 29, Alley 45, Liaoning St., Taipei (台北市遼寧街45巷29號).
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