Contemporary images and their many interpretations
A new exhibition exploring the evolution of reportage photography is currently being held at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. It features works by renowned artists from Taiwan and around the world. FTV reporter Stephany Yang spoke to the photographers to learn more about what they do.
Chou Ching-hui’s series of works centers around stories of children with disabilities. Chou spent several years interviewing 70 families, children, teachers, and volunteers. Before shooting, he listened to the transcripts, created hand-drawn sketches, wrote scripts, and selected props. He completed an installation of large-scale composite images telling the stories of children with disabilities and their families and teachers. Visitors can put on a headset and listen to audio recordings of the interviews.
Chou Ching-hui
Photographer
This work combined audio of interviews with parents telling their own stories. My work started from interviews. When I was working on this project, I interviewed more than 70 families, as well as special education teachers, psychologists, and family members. After the interviews, I typed it into a manuscript, which has 760,000 words. I then grouped the 760,000 words into topics about education, how to face life and death, and religion. Each photo combined the stories of five or six families. It mainly discusses some of the difficulties faced by families with mental disabilities in this society, how they face medical treatment, how they face death, and how they face religion.
Hsieh San-tai spent several years on Green Island, shooting the untold stories of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience on Green Island in the 1950s.
Hsieh San-tai
Photographer
For around two years or so, I photographed over 80 victims of political persecution in Taiwan. When photographing political prisoners, many of them didn’t trust each other and were even divided because they had been forced to confess and were tortured. The imprisonment of so many people, especially during the transitional justice in Taiwan at that time, is a very important part of the history of Taiwan.
A new exhibition exploring the evolution of reportage photography is currently on display at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Ranging from the analog era to the digital age, the exhibition examines the impact of technology on image content and production.
Sharleen Yu
Curator
The exhibition focuses on contemporary real-time images, how it began with reportage photography, which focuses on contemporary issues, and then gradually declined as a result of the rapid advancement of science and technology. You can see many manifestations of contemporary image creation in the exhibition, including photography, photography installations, and action plans from photographic perspectives. I think you can feel the power of images as photography became a part of contemporary art creation.
The "Theater of the Times: Contemporary Images and Their Many Interpretations" exhibition is currently being held at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum until July 13.
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2025-04-23
