A Taipei-based professional wedding photographer is leading a volunteer effort to make graduation photography and yearbooks available to remote and underfunded elementary schools, most of which serve Aboriginal communities.
Yang Wen-yi (楊文逸), whose landscape photographs of Penghu have been showcased by the Penghu County Government in an exhibition, launched the project last year to help schools that cannot afford to hire professional photographers.
“My motive is simple — to use my professional skills to do something for society,” he said.
Photo provided by Yang Wen-yi VIA CNA
One of the projects that Yang’s team of volunteers undertook last year was with Mudan Elementary School in Pingtung County’s Mudan Township (牡丹), a small school attended primarily by Paiwan Aborigines, with a graduating class of eight students, he said.
The schoolchildren were very excited during the photo shoot, wearing their Paiwan costumes and posing freely for the camera, Yang said.
When he proposed putting the photographs together and publishing a yearbook, the children became very excited, with one asking: “Are we really going to have yearbooks?”
Yang recalled that when he talked about the project to the principal at Taian Elementary School in Miaoli County, the school official told him he was happy to hear about the volunteer effort, because it had been 10 years since the school had a photographer at its graduation event.
“This is the kind of work that I want to do. City students think their graduation photographs are nothing special, but for children living in the mountains, it is just a dream,” Yang said. “I am helping them put their childhood memories in print.”
So far this year, Yang’s volunteer team has provided photography services to four elementary schools: Wunshuei, Taising and Cingan in Miaoli County, and Longshou in Taoyuan.
The volunteers are to take graduation photos at three more schools this month: Haibao and Taian in Miaoli County and Mudan.
Yang said he and his team try their best to create yearbooks that the children want, as he called on more professional photographers, hobbyists and drivers to volunteer for the project.
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