When Hsu Chia-chu (徐嘉駒) starts work at Apple Daily on Friday, he'll be one of several dozen photographers comprising that paper's full-time photographic staff. What sets him apart from his new colleagues is that he hasn't yet finished learning his trade.
Born in 1978, Hsu is currently studying Graphic Communication at Shih Hsin University. His first photos, he said, were mostly of the natural scenes found throughout his native Miaoli County. But with his first trip to the nation's capital, he began an aesthetic infatuation with the seemingly disparate images found throughout Taipei. It is his eye for capturing these images in a single frame that earned him a job at the nation's newest news daily.
A small exhibition of his works, which opened yesterday at the Taiwan International Visual Arts Center (TIVAC), is titled Drift in Taipei -- Still Life, but it is his images of living subjects and not his still lifes which are the exhibit's real draw.
Though the prints on display number fewer than a dozen, several deserve more than a few moments' perusal. A temple god being paraded through Hsimenting is set against the backdrop of a huge Calvin Klein underwear ad; the god glares angrily at the underwear model, who is crouched on all fours with her derriere seemingly stuck in the god's face. In another print, a beggar lays prostrate between thick white lines painted on the street, his belongings in a plastic bag tied to his belt loop. Hsu snapped the photo at a moment when the crowd happened to be on either side of the white lines, leaving the beggar kowtowing to empty space. The image ironically juxtaposes the social positions of the beggar and the throng of shoppers at his sides, giving the impression that the beggar rules the street and the shoppers pass only as he pleases.
"Taipei is such a multi-dimensional and advanced city, comprising cultural conflicts," Hsu said. "Students from the countryside are eager to come here."
Hsu's still-lifes, while not possessing the vibrancy of his animated subjects, still show his eye for interesting detail. His chosen subject matter for the TIVAC exhibit is a fork resting on an empty plate. But what makes the images interesting -- one image in particular -- is that Hsu has focused almost exclusively on the fork's shadow cast onto the plate's convex surface. Zoomed in, the tines of the fork and their warped shadows take on architectural proportions. It's only when you see the other prints where the handle of the fork and edge of the plate are visible that you realize what it is you're looking at.
The same can be said of Hsu. He may not yet have completed his education, but a close look at what he has already learned reveals what might well be a formidable future talent.
Drift in Taipei -- Still Life will show through May 14 on the basement level of the Taiwan International Visual Arts Center (
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