"Indigenous Man Smoking a Bamboo Pipe," Chang Tsai (Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum)
By June Tsai
In this age of digitalization, pictures are easily taken, deleted, reproduced, disseminated and re-touched. But what makes a photograph endure? When looking at the black and white photography of Chang Tsai, one comes to realize that images survive because of the engaged gaze of the photographer.
Though now regarded as a pioneer in the history of Taiwan documentary photography, Chang received very little publicity during his lifetime. A mass retrospective held by the Taipei Museum of Fine Arts, lasting until June 6, aims to redress the balance.
The eventful decades Chang lived through and recorded come to life through the 265 pictures included in the display, ranging in time and place from Shanghai in the 1940s to Taiwan after the end of World War II.
Also included are personal objects belonging to the photographer such as his beloved Leica camera, tealeaf cans used to store negatives, and pictures of himself at work or of his family and friends.
According to curator Chien Yun-ping, the exhibition is entitled “Image Map” because the photos on display represent a “visual mapping of time.”
“The ‘mappings’ show how Chang was shaped by war, and how he responded to the turbulent era in which he lived,” according to Chien.
Born into a highly cultured family in western Taipei’s Dadaocheng district in 1916, Chang was brought up in an atmosphere of refinement but also of simmering discontent. It was in Dadaochen, at around the time of Chang’s birth, that a movement of peaceful resistance against Japanese colonial rule began to crystallize. In time, this resistance would emanate outward and infect more and more parts of the island.
Chang’s brother, Wei-hsian, 11 years his senior, played a major role in promoting modern theater in Taiwan. He was also a member of the anti-Japanese, left-leaning, cultural elite of the time.
As Chang’s father had died when he was very young, the future photographer was cared for by his elder brother—“an intellectual and an anarchist,” in Chang’s words—who exerted a profound influence on his life.
When Chang was a teenager, Wei-hsian allowed him to travel and perform with the theater group he had formed for the purpose of advancing the cause of social enlightenment.
In order to learn a trade, Chang went to Japan at the age of 18. He took up photography in Tokyo, where Wei-hsian also immersed himself in the modern theater world of Japan’s Taisho period.
In Japan, Chang came under the spell of the new realism movement in photography, which revealed to him a completely new world of cutting-edge ideas and photographic techniques. But the influence of this school of thought would not manifest itself until much later.
Upon his return to Taiwan, Chang opened a photography studio in Taipei. He spent most of his time, however, on other pursuits: literature, music, and taking a picture every now and then of pretty girls or some enchanting scenery.
“The images of Chang Tsai with a Leica camera hanging around with his photography friends show him as a chic and smart young man about town. Remember: the German instrument could cost as much as a house at the time,” Chien noted.
The good times did not last, however. After Japan launched the Pacific War, it strengthened its control over Taiwan and began recruiting local Taiwanese to serve as foot soldiers in its war machine.
In an attempt to avoid being drafted, Chang moved to Shanghai, where he joined his mother and brother, the latter of whom had by now set up an import-export business in the great commercial city.
The scenes Chang witnessed in Shanghai—of poverty, lawlessness, and indifference to human suffering—completely shook him out of the idyllic view of the world he had held until then.
“When I first arrived in Shanghai, I saw many customs and habits that were different from Taiwan,” Chang jotted down in his notebook, also on display at the exhibition. “That is why, whenever I could, I felt compelled to photograph pictures of all the things I saw there.”
Since he held a Japanese colonial passport, Chang had access to Shanghai’s foreign concessions. It was a privilege not allowed to local Chinese, who were regarded as potential spies, especially if they were found carrying a camera around. Free to roam in the concessions, Chang was able to capture many images of Shanghai. These images are now a rare visual record of a Chinese city colonized by multiple foreign powers.
He took snapshots of people and stores, crowds and pedestrians, cable cars and rickshaws, daily scenes and special occasions. Through these pictures, Chang managed to show not only the level of sophistication, but also the personal isolation and underlying mistrust, among the inhabitants of the great metropolis at the time.
In 1946, Chang and his family returned to Taiwan, because “the Communists were coming,” as he told critic Huang Han-ti during a 1991 interview three years before his death. “Our house was sold but because of hyperinflation, by the time we got to Taiwan, it was almost worthless.”
Chang returned just in time for another historical occurrence. After the Japanese left Taiwan at the end of World War II, the island was ruled for a few years (1945-1947) by the Taiwan Provincial Administrative Office acting on behalf of the Nationalist government in mainland China.
But corruption, inflation, illegal appropriation of personal property and numerous other errors had made the government deeply unpopular. After a woman was shot to death on Feb. 28, 1947, widespread protests broke out throughout the island. To quell the unrest, authorities killed hundreds and perhaps thousands of people in what has come to be known as the February 28 Incident.
Though many of these chaotic events took place near where Chang lived, and though he followed the crowds and took hundreds of pictures of the riots, Chang would later destroy all these photographs, “lest they bring calamity on the heads of more innocent people,” Chang told Huang.
After the turmoil subsided, Chang continued to operate his film studio, and turned his attention to documenting the lives of common people in everyday situations.
Some of the photographs he took at this time are on display at the exhibition: from the 1940s, images of local Taiwanese opera actors during their off-stage moments; from the 1950s, pictures of the faithful participating in religious processions in Taipei and other locales.
The photographs perfectly capture the expressions and activities of the people of the time, and the viewer comes to believe that he was actually there to participate in the events and begins to wonder what those people were thinking.
Chang once said of his photographs that “I do not put much thought into them. I just shoot.” This almost Zen-like quality enabled Chang to produce visually stunning pictures, which are also invaluable historic and social documents of the time, according to Chang Chao-tang, a renowned local photographer.
Take for instance the panorama pictures of the “Sacrificial Pigs Festival” series from the 1950s. They are powerful, he said, exactly because the viewer does not feel that a photographer was even there to capture the scene.
During the early 1950s, Chang also turned his attention to the indigenous people of Taiwan. He made two trips to the offshore Orchid Island, home of the aboriginal Tao people, as well as to other aboriginal communities on the island. During these visits he took many pictures for anthropologists including Academia Sinica academician Chen Chi-lu.
Unlike standard anthropological pictures, which usually view their subjects as objects to be studied, Chang’s photos of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan include face-to-face encounters, and show that “he regarded his subjects as his equals,” according to Chien.
There is no trace of the outlandish exoticism that photographs of indigenous cultures too often contain, just an objective but at the same time respectful view of the tribal people as they went about their everyday lives.
Chang’s daughter Ling-ling described her father as a down-to-earth person who enjoyed life. “He liked drinking and dancing and had a story to tell about every picture he ever took,” she said.
This aspect of his personality may hint at how Chang managed to live through so many political upheavals while still being able to produce an impressive body of work.
Though telling his ideas and stories through lens, Chang seldom attempted to explain or analyze his own work. Perhaps his attitude toward the art is best summarized by the motto of Japanese photojournalist Ihei Kimura (1901-1974), which appeared in a business card Chang cherished and often shared with younger photographers: I believe culture should guide politics.
This article is published in Taiwan Today May 14.
