Fotoaura Institute of Photography in Tainan

The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA), with its striking architecture, stands out among the buildings of Tai­chung. Every weekend and holiday it provides a beautiful backdrop for everyone from amateur shutterbugs to professional teams shooting wedding photos.

In 2018, the ­NTMoFA has teamed up with Japan’s Ki­yo­sato Museum of Photographic Arts to hold two heavyweight photo exhibitions, drawing in crowds of photography lovers. The entire museum, inside and out, has become a mecca for fans of photography.

Macro and micro, period and person

Being more dependent on technology than traditional arts like painting and sculpture, the rise of photography is a relatively recent phenomenon. However, its ability to capture the “decisive moment,” and the technical skill involved, have helped it rise to a status equal to other art forms.

Over recent years, the ­NTMoFA has played host to several heavyweight photography exhibitions, a trend that seems to imply that people’s passion for photography as art is booming, and that announces photography’s important place in contemporary art. In Taiwan, where there is little in the way of formal education in photography, such exhibitions have become major conduits for the public to get access to photographic art.

As a national art museum, the ­NTMoFA’s mission has always been to help construct a fuller picture of Taiwan’s art history. Looking back over the most standout photography exhibitions the museum has hosted over the past decade thus gives us a time-lapse look at how Taiwanese photography has grown and evolved.

In contrast with the ­NTMoFA’s attempt to bring past and present together to form a unified whole, more local museums tend to try and explore the artistic essence of photography from other perspectives. Such museums have hosted solo exhibitions from a variety of artists, from Lee Ming-tiao and ­Chang Tsai to ­Chang Chao-tang and Shen Chao-­liang.

The 2017 exhibition “Faint Light, Dark Shadows” set out to question the essence of photography through a variety of themes and from an artistic perspective. It also went beyond the bounds of the ­traditional photographic exhibition and expanded the position of photography within art through the inclusion of video. From this, we can see that such regional museums play a valuable role as counterparts to the ­NTMoFA.

A new photographic language

Exhibitions at art museums tend to be more academic in nature and broader in scope, while smaller privately run exhibitions generally lean toward more creative approaches. Nearly a decade ago, photographer Lee Hsu-pin chose Tai­nan, known for its artistic and cultural side, to be home to the “Foto­aura Institute of Photography.” Since then, Foto­aura has hosted several significant events in photographic culture.

Confronted with photography’s inherent ability to capture scenes and atmospheres and its inability to clearly describe the nature of events, Lee has striven in his curation of exhibitions to go beyond the ontological limits of photography by mixing in other media, including video and installation art, to help draw out the inner world of the photographers and the hidden meaning within their images.

In recent years, solo exhibitions by Lin Bo-­liang and Wang Yu-pang have been held to rave receptions, as Lee enthusiastically recounts.

“Every photographer has his own unique story and starting point,” says Lee. For example, Lin Bo-­liang, who in his youth was taught by Shiy De-jinn, was an important player in Taiwanese photography, and captured images of major literary figures like Chou Meng-tieh, Yeh Shih-tao, and Qi Deng­sheng. However, before this solo exhibition, he had lain silent for some two decades.

To help bring people to an understanding of the meaning of Lin Bo-­liang’s portraits, Lee made use of methods including video and audio to assist Lin in telling their stories. He also designed a handbook for the exhibition which came in a five-by-seven-inch metal photo-paper box. It included reproductions of postcards sent between Lin and Shiy De-jinn, newspaper and magazine cuttings, and a “preface” written by Lee in the guise of a letter from himself to Lin. The handbook was a kind of primer for the show, while the exhibition itself was almost a biography of the photographer.

That small solo exhibition was such a great success that it attracted the attention of the Kao­hsiung Museum of Fine Arts, resulting in both an invitation to move the exhibition there and the reinvigoration of Lin’s reputation.

Wang Yu-pang, meanwhile, comes from quite a different background. For the past 24 years, this self-taught photographer has made the abandoned Ru­kai village of Ku­ca­pun­gane (known as Hao­cha in Chinese) in Ping­tung County his subject, recording the process of its people’s rebuilding of the trail to their old home after the trail was destroyed by storms and landslides. Lee Hsu-pin used painting to reproduce the rising and falling contours of the old trail on the exhibition walls, with the photos displayed in their actual geographical locations. “Walking through the exhibition is then like walking their ‘trip home’ yourself,” remarks Lee.

These creative ideas have won no shortage of recognition, including positive reviews from the judges of the Tai­shin Art Awards, who noted how the exhibition broke free of the usual aesthetic constraints of genre, transforming the experience for visitors into one of getting involved with documents and clues. This exhibition also landed an invite from the ­Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines and another from the NTMoFA. The Kao­hsiung Museum of Fine Arts was so taken with it that, in an unprecedented move, they were eager to discuss the possibility of acquiring both the photographs and the exhibition design for their collection.

An exhibition in miniature

Japan’s most prestigious photography award, the Ki­mura Ihei Award, looks at works from both exhibitions and books. Photographer Shen Chao-­liang once said that as the quality of photography collections improves, books will become more than just printed works, evolving into something closer to concentrated exhibition spaces. With their framing and reinterpretation of the images within, books of photo­graphy take on an importance no less than that of one-off exhibitions.

Similarly based out of Tai­nan, young photographer Lin Si­xuan, known in photography circles as ­Shuang Mien ­Chiao (“double-sided tape”), started her own photo­graphy-themed bookstore, Orbital Books. The store offers over 400 photobooks for perusal, operating on the principle that “we might not have what you were looking for, but we might have what you never knew you wanted.” Photography fans and curious readers alike are drawn to this space for unexpected encounters with photography.

Every so often, Lin will head abroad to seek out out-of-print and other hard-to-find books. While some may see such books as ponderous and pricey, what she sees is the creativity therein, and that makes it all the harder to leave them unpurchased. Take Astres Noirs, for example. A collection of images shot on cellphones, the black paper and silver ink the book is printed with make for a magical atmosphere, echoing the way photo­graphy captures everyday moments in a flash. Or what about Until Death Do Us Part, a unique collection of shots of traditional Chinese wedding banquets and their tradition of having the bride light a cigarette for each male guest as a gesture of appreciation. The book comes in a 1:1 replica of a “Double Happiness” brand cigarette pack and transforms the abandoned negatives of an unknown amateur photographer into a gorgeous experience that is sure to spark up conversation among photography fans.

Lin spent years as an amateur shutterbug before finally setting her mind to going pro, and this background has given her a very different perspective than more “academic” photographers. She has consciously oriented her store toward the general public, making it accessible even to those who have no real understanding of photo­graphy. These total newcomers can walk in and pore over a few books in the reading area as they sit or lie on the tatami mats that line the floor, finding whatever position makes them comfortable. Looking over such collections often requires taking advantage of reference materials and the knowledge of those around one, so Lin encourages her guests to chat, and she herself will often share her own experience with them too.

In the interests of promoting the hobby, Lin has also stashed an old-school film camera in the bathroom, where the cellphone signal is terrible. Customers can freely make use of the camera, and when each roll of film is done, she gets it developed and scanned and posts the pictures on Instagram. Through this, she encourages her customers to think about photography as part of daily life, and about getting involved in a virtual photo exhibition, while they’re stuck unable to futz with their phones.