Drawing from its collection of over 11,000 works, the National Center for Photography and Images’ (國家攝影文化中心) inaugural domestic exhibit, Hold the Mirror up to His Gaze (舉起鏡子迎上他的凝視), presents a valuable record of Taiwan’s photographic history from 1869 to 1949. It includes personal albums as well as pieces scanned from negatives acquired from now-shuttered photo studios. The subject matter shifts from the lens of visiting Europeans to Japanese colonizers to Taiwanese pioneers like Deng Nan-guang (鄧南光) and Chang Tsai (張才).
Such an overview is fitting for the center’s grand debut, but organizers are eager to point out that their collection is more than just about documentation.
Set within the same exhibition space is an accompanying exhibition curated by David Campany, who serves as the managing director of programs at the International Center of Photography in New York. A Handful of Dust: From the Cosmic to the Domestic is a conceptual show exploring various allegories represented by dust at various scales through the visual arts. The two radically different displays create a sharp contrast that somehow works.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
The exhibitions are housed in a tastefully refurbished 84-year-old Japanese colonial-era office building that combines Asian and European architectural elements.
Preview tours are all booked up, but it will open to the public at no cost on April 20.
Fu Yuan-cheng (傅遠政), who heads the center, says after working closely with experts to establish the scope of the rescue efforts for Hold the Mirror up to His Gaze, they began collecting works that were scattered across Taiwan and the world. Nine experts participated in the research for the domestic show, including Magnum photographer Chang Chien-chi (張乾琦), whose work is also on display.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
Many of the original prints have been lost to time and were stored in collections as film negatives or glass plates, which the museum was able to scan and reprint. While Deng left behind a limited number of works after he died in 1971, his family had carefully preserved his film for over 40 years. The value of these go beyond reproduction, Fu says.
“Through his film rolls, we can get a glimpse of how [Deng] framed his shots, or how he made his selections,” he says.
A few of these film albums are on view, organized chronologically and easily navigable with thought-provoking text to place the pieces in historical context.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
The only complaint is that the description labels are placed too low, making the viewer have to bend down to read the text — and there are a lot of captions to read.
Labeling is also an issue with A Handful of Dust as all of the entries are grouped into one panel in the room, making the viewer have to run back and forth to match the piece to the text.
Inspired by Dust Breeding, a photograph by surrealist visual artist Man Ray showing dust gathering on a work by Marcel Duchamp, Campany’s selections run the gamut from the light-hearted and artistic to social issues and mass destruction. Who knew dust could generate such discussion and imagination?
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
The building housing the exhibition has been altered significantly over its life, and it’s evident that a great deal of work was put into restoring it. The full story of the building’s history and restoration can be found in the single-room permanent display, Trans-Communication (跨交通).
The first floor features a coffee and pastry shop with a market-style gift store, but the real gem is the cozy photography library hidden in the back where one can just kick back and pore through the work of the greats.
All in all, it’s an excellent show that hopefully provides inspiration in putting together future domestic exhibitions.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless