On one of the photo walks I do as part of my class, I recently took my students to the Nanjichang Community, which is slated for demolition so that developers can put up even more useless, soulless empty high-rises. The chief of the community took us around to the various interesting bits of the community, which was the first of its kind in Taipei. It was built on the former site of the south airport used by the Japanese, thus the name Nanjichang, which means “south airport”, and includes rows of multi-storied buildings containing tiny apartments connected by central spiral staircases that never caught on in subsequent designs. Over the years, residents have built out and up, so that once-wide lanes are now narrow alleys. Some of the added balconies themselves have added balconies, and it’s a miracle that one of them hasn’t collapsed by now. There is also a market, a compact elementary school, a surprising number of cats and an unsurprising number of smells. The whole place is a fascinating mix, the residents mostly poor people, the elderly, the handicapped, Southeast Asians, caregivers and orphans. The community chief wants to highlight the existence of the place, even though he is powerless to stop the demolition. I’m thinking of doing another photo walk there with my friend and fellow photographer Craig Ferguson. There are plenty of spaces around that could be used for a small exhibition. Who knows, we might be able to play a part in somehow preserving the history of the place or even helping the people who live there, people whom I doubt will be compensated very well when the place is torn down.

One of the buildings in the community, a triangular building with a courtyard in the center, strictly prohibits random people entering and photographing the place. The reason is that they charge for such things, and actually make a tidy profit from various photography, TV and movie shoots. The community chief took us in and let everyone wander for a period of time. Chenbl and I stayed in the courtyard chatting with the community chief, and at one point one of the residents came storming up to him, cursing up a storm. “One of those photographers came into my home and took my picture!” He spat in Taiwanese. I found this surprising and unlikely as I’ve always told my students that respect for the people they photograph is of the utmost importance.

The community chief was also suspicious, and he volleyed back with his own, even more impressive string of Taiwanese expletives, expressing doubt over the man’s story, and asking for proof. “Which one was it?” he demanded. But the man couldn’t point anyone out or say anything specific. Chenbl and I stood in between the two, listening in frank admiration to these two men shout and gesture at each other.

“Fucking renter,” the chief muttered after the man left, unable to prove his claims of injustice. “He doesn’t even own that place.” Eventually I was able to ascertain that a student had taken a picture of the hallway outside of his apartment, not even shooting the guy himself, and he had construed this as “barging into his home.”

Something tells me that that particular building will be one of the less-missed parts of the community when it’s gone.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been teaching a photography course at the Zhongzheng Community College, and although it’s been a good deal of work, it’s also been interesting. I’ve learned a lot in the process, not just about photography but about myself, and some of it’s been kind of, well, stupid.

I’ll illustrate this with a story: I often tell my students not to get too upset when they miss a shot, because in my experience you miss even more shots while you’re busy being upset about missing the original shot. Still, I can’t help but rile myself up when it happens to me. Recently I was on my way to my favorite photobook shop, Artland on Renai Road across from the old Air Force base, when I noticed some nice light and patterns on the Lotus Building. I walked around the back and saw a wonderful composition of a woman on a smoke break with her hand just so among the lines of the building amid the plants. Just as my finger pressed the shutter, however, she moved and it because a rather ordinary shot. Then she went inside, the light disappeared, and I was left in a heavy funk I had no right to be in.

Usually the gods will taunt me in these circumstances by with a series of other tasty opportunities to miss, but this time I needed a Proper Lesson, it seems; just as I was stewing over the lost shot, heading down the stairs into the basement where the bookstore is located, I took a wrong step and began the seemingly interminable process of falling down the concrete stairs. Anyone who has fallen down stairs can tell you that it just…goes…on…and…on. Eddie Murphy’s entire comedic bit on the process (“my shoe!”) went through my mind as I waited for myself to come to rest. At one point I felt and heard my camera strike the concrete with a loud THUNK, and I thought, well, that makes sense; it’s just out of the two-year warranty.

I ended up sprawled in a leisurely fashion on a group of potted plants at the bottom of the stairs. I could feel what I hoped was wet sod from one of the overturned pots under me. I ached in various places, but unlike the case of my friend and fellow BMEr Justin Vogel’s recent mishap, nothing seemed broken, and I took a shot with my camera to make sure it stilled worked. A fashionably dressed woman hurried down the stairs, glanced at me, and kept going. “Thanks for the help!” I offered her retreating figure. I must have looked like a drunk, homeless person who has just woken up with no idea where he is. But this, I realized, was what you get when you stew over missing a shot. It’s stupid and a waste of time, and if you get too upset, some wandering spirit will toss your ass down some stairs into a photobook shop doorway just to knock some sense into you.

Despite the fact that I managed to hold out until a decent hour before going to bed, I still woke up around 2 a.m. I managed to get back to sleep, waking up at another decent hour in my hotel room. The Park Hotel is an old building that puts me in mind of something out of an old detective story, with all of the old, painted-over fittings, the rounded ceiling corners, the bathtub with feet, the sink in the room, the weighted wooden frame of the window. No need for air conditioning, the weather is cool, almost wintery by Taiwanese standards; fortunately I brought a jacket. From what I gather, some people basically live there. I can understand that as rents in SF were already ridiculous years ago, and they’re still skyrocketing, especially in gentrificating neighborhoods like the Tenderloin.

After a quick breakfast a la Walgreens, I walked down Market Street to the bay and along the waterfront to Pier 24, where I met my friend and fellow BME member Jack Simon. Jack used his considerable influence to get me into the exclusive photography gallery there, and we spent the next hour or so looking and wondering about a Paul Graham exhibit that included three of his photographic series. The space was excellent and the staff supremely knowlegable. My only concern was that the deep frames in combination with the lack of ambient light made for deep shadows across the tops of many of the photos, influening the sense of composition. Graham apparently had o problem with it, I was told when I mentioned it to the staff. Jack didn’t notice it until I told him, and then he said he couldn’t unnotice it. Sorry, Jack.

Afterwards, we walked up Mission to the Tenderloin and lunch with two other photographers, Joe Aguirre and Ben Molina. It was great to exchange and discuss our various work and ideas over delicious chicken and rice, washed down with mate full of lovely, lovely caffeine. We ate out on the red brick sidewalk, cracked with use. Ben possesses encylopedic knowlege of photographic history and artists, which added a lot to the discussion.

Joe had to go start work at his coffee/wine shop at 1:30, so Ben, Jack and I walked through the Mission, taking in a modest Todd Hido exhibition, and also tea at a coffeehouse with a wooden boat in front of it, startling a young white woman from Austin who was wearing dog-themed pantyhose. As we walked towards a grafitti-themed alley, a young black man shouted from his car, “Respect the arts! Y’all got cameras in your hands…” I looked back and nodded my agreement at him.

The grey coolness of the morning evaporated into solid blue skies as we walked, and I saw a handful of potentially wonderful photos, but I have a hard time photographing when I’m engaged in conversation with other people, and the conversation was on point. Perhaps it’s just as well, as I would need to spend a bit more time getting a grasp on the local photographic mores.

The sky clouded over again as we walked back to Joe’s work, where we sat and talked while he served us drinks and occasional tasty pastries . Jack had to leave after a while, and Ben took me to a place called the Super Duper Burger Joint or something like that, and the burgers were indeed Super. The bathrooms had combination locks on them, and the codes were on the receipts, which I found clever. Strange, but clever.

Joe had gotten off work at 9:30 and met us outside the restaurant, but Ben had to go home. Joe took me through Chinatown to a bar where Jack Kerouak apparently hung out, now full of people Kerouak would probably spit on. We sat and talked and drank until around midnight, after which we parted ways, Joe on a bus home and me back to my hotel.

I was already awake this morning when Chenbl Lined me, and pretty much packed, so I was checked out and picking up some convenience-store snacks in half an hour, and on the BART to the airport ten minutes after that. Public transit in San Francisco works pretty well, and now they even have rental bicycles now.

Now I’m sitting in the departure lounge at SFO, having sped through check-in and the TSA circus smoothly, only to find that my flight to Oklahoma City has been delayed until after noon. Fortunately they have wifi, so I’ve been spending the time here to write this account.

I’ve had a great time this time in San Francisco, meeting a lot of great people and seeing a bit of the city. I wish I could stay longer. Perhaps I will do that some other time.

I like this article about Robert Frank, in that it attempts to address Frank’s viewpoint and method, touching on how difficult people with issues work towards art by bringing ugly things from deep down to light without dressing them up with absurd excuses, uncovering realities that are so true they can’t help but be beautiful.

In this age of constant connectedness and constant self-presentation, however, when one mistweet or inappropriate instagram can bring down global shunning, the dynamics of fame in any field, not just photography, have shifted. Back in the day, one would often find in any successful photographer’s bio the phrase “…fortunately happened to know (insert famous, influential individual here),” not to mention “…came from a wealthy family.” Other than those, and the work produced, not much else mattered. Connections, wealth, talent and luck, in that order.

It puts a dent in my admiration for photographers like Cartier-bresson and Eggleston, and increases my respect for photographers like Moriyama and Kertesz who hauled themselves up, though of course the work is the work, and the photographer is the photographer. I know talented photographers who produce excellent work but who are impossible to deal with, just as I know wonderful people who are kind and just and warm invididuals, whose photography…well, isn’t. The two aren’t necessarily connected, but I suspect that those people who are disconnected from society are better able to see society for what it really is. You have to go out of the house to see the house, as it were. If you’re constantly thinking of how you appear to others, making sure you’re socially acceptable, ensuring that you present the right sentiments at the right time, you’re not going to have the time or presence of mind to observe your surroundings with an eye to what’s really happening outside of yourself.

Frank was a terrible person to many people, by many accounts. Like Eugene Smith and Vivian Maier, he wasn’t cut out for family life or even social life…he couldn’t work with others; he couldn’t stand many other photographers; Magnum wouldn’t touch him. Some may think that his photography was brilliant despite these things, but I’m certain it was brilliant because of these things. If Maier had had a champion to maneuver her beyond her social and financial limitations, would we have seen her emerge as one of her era’s preeminant photographers? Likewise, if Frank had pissed off Walker Evans earlier, would we now be seeing stories like “Lifelong janitor’s road-trip photographs uncovered at yard sale will BLOW YOUR MIND (#37 made me choke up)”?

It doesn’t seem to work that way these days, however. For one thing, there is the deluge of online imagery, which doesn’t seem to have increased the amount of good photography by as much as people were expecting; if anything, it might have even somehow reduced it. But the Great Image Flood has managed to produce a different paradigm for judging value. Now we have contests for images taken with a certain machine or in a certain place, or by people of a certain age. People sit in front of computers taking screenshots of Google Streetview and call it photography. Others write about the latest gear and accrue huge followings, while more and more governments strive to demonize photography by their citizens while increasing their own surveillance capabilities, two phenomona that are not unrelated, crowing about the End of the Private when what is really happening is the End of the Public. And amid all this are the constant articles about the Death of Photography, as if to paraphrase a Pixar movie script, saying that when everyone is a photographer, no one is.

I don’t necessarily subscribe to the “Image Flood” photopocalypse theory, however. Why bother looking at anything if there’s so much out there, people seem to be saying. But we can only view so many images a day, just as we always have. If a billion images are uploaded in a forest, do they make a sound?

These are no doubt confusing times for someone who is interested in photography. I’m not singling out studio/model/business/sports/wildlife/landscape/HumansofRandomCity/yourlastmealatChipotle/whatever images, but actual photography. A lot of good work is being done, but any metric we once might have had evaluating it, much less finding it and appreciating it, has largely been replaced by counterproductive niceties and artspeak. It’s great and it’s there if you can find it, but don’t expect an easy path or anything approaching valid agreement of its worth. A flash on your screen and it’s gone. Offscreen, out of mind.

The death of photography, as well as many other things, could really only be the result of our refusal to observe and, as Georgia O’Keefe said, “make our unknown known.” Robert Frank did this, and his unknown was beautiful. It couldn’t not be. Unfortunately, in this knowlege-driven age, ignorance has become our greatest power (all you have to do is open virtually any comments section to see just how eager we are to wield it). There are modern-day Franks and Cartier-bressons and Smiths and Maiers. There are artists producing amazing work that transcends all of those, but they’re not the ones you know. The ones you know are concentrating on making sure you know them, and they don’t have the time to not suck.

The hotel had arranged for a car to the airport leaving at 7:30 a.m., but we were up at 5 and out on the streets to watch the city come to life. Chenbl was looking for the city gate we’d stumbled upon the previous day, but we failed to restumble upon it, and instead spent the time wandering around markets and random streets as the sun appeared and began to cast interesting light here and there.

Just as the light was getting really good, though, we had to leave. Time was up. Breakfast was had, and soon we were in the car driving sedately (there seems to be no other way to drive in Vietnam…everything is more or less sedate) in the direction of the airport. No muss, no fuss. We tipped the driver and walked back into the flurry cloud of travel, which included a large group of Very Loud Chinese just behind us. Oddly, the woman at the desk had us weigh our carry-ons, and then declared that we’d have to check them as they were over seven kilograms. This has never happened to me before, not just being over the weight, but having to weigh my carry-on luggage at all. Now we were free and unencumbered, with no worries as long as we didn’t miss our connecting flight.

So we missed our connecting flight. It wasn’t our fault; our flight out of Hanoi was delayed coming in, so by the time we got to Hong Kong our other flight had already left. We might have made it if air traffic control hadn’t had us flying in circles for half an hour. The women who met us at the gate in HK already had us on the next Cathay flight back to Taipei, but they’d also put us in the very middle seats. Once we were on board I asked a stewardess if there were any window seats available. The HK woman next to me then asked her the same thing. Five minutes later, the HK woman was escorted to an emergency exit window seat, but Chenbl had to snap at the stewardess to remind her of my request. In any case, I ended up with a nice view of the brand-spanking new Rolls-Royce engine as we jetted back to Taipei, a few hours behind schedule.

The train station, where the bus dropped us off, was full of people, as it tends to be on weekends. I really can’t wait for the airport MRT to be finished so I can start bitching about that instead of the airport buses. I was exhausted by the time I got home, and went to bed without fully unpacking.

The reason for this was that the next day, i.e. Sunday, I was hosting/judging a photography event in Sanxia. In order to make it there on time, I caught the first bus from Xindian at 6:40 a.m., arriving in Sanxia a little after 7. After wandering around the market a bit and meeting up with Chenbl and Ewan, the people who had arranged the event briefed me on what I was supposed to do. Basically it was a contest for market photography, and the event was kicking the whole thing off. I talked a little bit about this and that, went with them around the market, and we took some photos. It was fun. A few dozen photographers registered for the event, which includes some very nice prizes. Many of the participating photographers were seriously equipped older men who weren’t quite sure what the hell I was doing there but were afraid to ask.

Afterwards, we had some lunch in an alley, and then walked over to the temple to meet up with my friend Ashish, who brought along his two adorably cute kids. We walked around and chatted over ice treats before Ashish had to leave.

Just then a temple ceremony started up, so we watched people taking statuettes in and out of the temple, accompanied by fireworks. Then it was back on the bus home. This time, however, I felt that my trip was truly concluded. I’d been thinking so much about getting up and going to the event that I hadn’t truly relaxed since I got back.

Aaaand now it’s Monday. There are some reports in the media about the event, but nothing major. Anyway, back to work. See you later.

With my afternoons free of gainful employment these days, I’ve been spending more time wandering about, which is wonderful and yet a bit scary as I’m so unused to it. I feel as if I should be doing something boring and, well, blatantly gainful, as opposed to something that is interesting yet somewhat more subtly gainful. It’s like a steering wheel has been suddenly thrust in my hands, and my response thus far has been less “I will guide this vehicle to the best route!” and more like “Ooh, let’s see where this road goes…this is a road, isn’t it? Or path?”

In recent days the weather has sometimes been a bit uninspiring, and those afternoons I’ve been spending at the Artland bookshop on Renai Road, in the basement of a formerly ritzy residence across from the former Air Force HQ. Eslite has some nice photographic books, but most bookshops here tend to focus on “How to Get the Most Out of Your Panasonic FX-3810-B’s Autofocus Algorithms (with Codes for Free Customization Profiles!)” rather than actual photography. And what Eslite does have I’ve seen a million times already, so Artland was a refreshing change. So far I’ve sat on a sofa whiling away many afternoons devouring such interesting work as Uncommon Places, Road Trip, Minutes to Midnight, the Photographers Sketchbook, etc. I haven’t found Eggleston’s Chromes there, alas, though I did get a look at them at the Pompidou in Paris. The light at Artland is nice and there is a speaker just over the sofa so that the music is just distracting enough that I don’t feel the need to keep glancing surreptitiously at the cashier, who can’t but have helped notice that I haven’t bought anything yet and must be tired of the little gasping sounds I make when I come across a particularly lovely print. I am thinking about buying something, though, possibly one of Webb’s books.

It was drizzling out when I emerged back onto the street after a long stint on the sofa this afternoon, and I noticed that most of Taipei has replaced its streetlights with bright white LEDs instead of the ugly yellow lights they used to have. I walked back up Renai and through the knotted maze of a neighborhood in the general direction of Dongmen Station, passing one of the most impressive trees I’ve seen in the city, and a great deal of cats. I love this town.

We took a bus to Taichung on Saturday. Well, most of us did. Sandman got lost and couldn’t find the station in time, so he caught the next bus. But David, Slim, Eddie, Conor and I managed to board at the new Taipei Bus Station, hidden in the lofty heights of the Q-Square building, in time to get down to Taichung by mid-afternoon. Every time I travel to Taichung I wonder what it would be like to live there, and note how much it has changed since I went to college there. And every time I conclude that without a metro system I would probably find it quite inconvenient. Hopefully the first new mayor the city has had in well over a decade will do something about this situation. We’ll see.

We were playing at an underground live house, the Sound Garden, where the performance space seemed to be hidden behind a door in the “regular” performance space. I had to ask where the fire exits were, as the place seemed ready-made for disaster with one long tunnel to the exit. After our sound check I noticed that nobody was around, but when I went outside I found a long line of people waiting to get in.

The show was great, even though we were without Thumper, our percussionist. Mojo, who had been waiting for us there, was helping us keep time with some small cymbals, but I had to concentrate rather harder than usual on keeping the bass-line steady, as I could feel everyone leaning a bit more heavily on it than they would have if Thumper were there. The audience reaction was ecstatic throughout the show and encores. The mood was great, and we sat around signing CDs for a long time after the show. This was followed by a sumptuous dinner at a restaurant across the street, which ran long because we were all still high from the show and full of bright talk. It was after 1 a.m. before we caught a bus back to Taipei, and after 4 when I tumbled into the Water Curtain Cave, grateful for my bed.

Our post-gig dinner

On Sunday I practiced violin. You didn’t know I played the violin? That’s because I don’t, really. I signed up for community college classes that start in March, but I haven’t studied since I was a five-year-old Suzuki student with a quarter-sized instrument in Maitland, Florida. But Chenbl convinced me to give it a shot, and now I feel really sorry for my neighbors. Sure, I play trumpet at home at reasonable hours, but I know how to play the trumpet. A beginner violin student really should be exiled to a soundproof room for several months at least. But the violin is borrowed and the classes are cheap, so if it doesn’t take…well, no harm, no foul.

I saw “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” recently. I kind of had to, as every single friend of mine had asked me if I’d seen it, and, as a photographer, if the movie really resonated with me. It was a strange film, with great camera work, but it didn’t really resonate with me, probably because I was wondering throughout whether it should. Another reason was the way photography was portrayed in the film, and the nerd in me got in the way when I saw Sean Penn trying to act like a photographer. “I just want to be here, seeing it for myself,” Penn says at one point in the film.

“No, you’re not seeing it for yourself, that’s a frickin’ 400mm lens!” I say to the TV and any neighbors who are listening in. “And Ben Stiller just screwed up your focus anyway!”

I recently took a break from browsing Internet content that could theoretically summon horrible bots to my computer to read Eric Kim’s description of his jet-setting travails. Every day he is meeting internationally famous people, and, damnit, the poor boy just can’t get a moment to himself to just go out and shoot! In the most noble fashion, however, Eric shrugs at this sacrifice, foregoing developing his own vision in solitude and instead plugging away on his mission to promote this thing he calls “street photography”.

I couldn’t help but note the contrast with my own travels. To me, the best kind of trip is open-ended, blanks schedules and vague goals, if any. When I went to Tokyo this last time, I did contact a few people in the photography community there, people who are constantly Doing Great Things Mentioned Frequently Online, but everyone was too busy to meet up. Of course I got to hang out with old friends like Yas and Louis, which was nice. Yas is always into interestingly bizarre things, and one of the things I appreciate most about Louis is that he puts a lot of thought into everything he says, making for very thought-provoking conversations (unless you count my meager contributions).

In any case, the more I thought about it, the happier I was that I wasn’t beholden to visiting bunches of people, free to wander the streets unnoticed, with no agenda, no meetings to attend, no keeping an eye on my watch (yes, I wear a watch; I hate having to pull out my phone just to check the time), eating at whatever time I was hungry at whatever place I happened across. If I’d had an agenda such as someone like Eric or Zack Arias or whomever, I would have gotten a lot less out of my time there than I did.

This is, of course, just me. Others may be “people people,” people who are more comfortable around other people, who derive feelings of security, safety, confidence and warmth from other people, who depend on those sources for whatever comfort they may feel. I am not such a person, as any of the few people who really know me can attest. There’s nothing inherently wrong with either type of personality. I am personally attracted to the art, photography, writing, what have you, that comes from people who tend to be loners, people who are acerbic and cranky if they hang around people too much. Difficult people. People who can see their surroundings clearly because they aren’t always busy wondering where they fit in. They know they don’t fit in, and never will. Even if they could, they wouldn’t get anything out of it.

Some of these have become famous as photographers, writer, etc. Vivian Maier was such a person, and even if she’d gotten her work in front of the right eyes at the time, she most likely wouldn’t have gotten anywhere simply because nobody wanted the hassle of dealing with her. And because she wasn’t already known, how could she become famous? She didn’t come from a rich family like Cartier-bresson or Eggleston or many of the others. She did what she could, and as much of what she loved as possible without sacrificing her dignity, unlike many others. Her story, including the most recent chapters, in which the vultures begin trying to peck apart any of the resulting fortune, is not surprising to anyone who has seen enough of the world and how things work.

In other news, the parents of a friend of mine are in town for my friend’s wedding tomorrow, which I will be attending. They hail from central Florida, not far from where I went to high school, so it was nice to meet up and chat about the area, which I haven’t seen for over two decades. After the wedding I will be rushing back to Taipei to try and catch the last part of the Daniel Pearl event at the Hakka Culture Park, but it’s going to be an iffy thing.

Everyone in my office is all in a tizzy about the new iPhone. Me, I’m sticking with my old iPhone 4. It works, and that’s enough for me.

I’ve been looking back at some of my older entries, and I have to admit I’m rather shocked at how much I wrote back in the day. And when I say “back in the day,” I mean before around 2008. After that, I mostly spent my time tooling around on Facebook, etc. and feeling sorry for myself.

But Facebook isn’t terribly good at looking back, and it feels a little cheap and mean. I kind of miss babbling on about my day on here, just me and maybe a couple of readers. They say blogging’s dead, but my keyboard still works. So here goes:

So my job is moving again. I’ve spent the last couple of years at a particular office that reminds me of an old, slightly seedy hotel that was once grand. Chipped wooden doors, musty old carpets, formerly high ceilings now covered with tiles, tarnished brass fittings, faded lacquer…that kind of thing. I’ve enjoyed it, as my friend Guo-xi is in the next cubicle, and it’s fun to chat about stuff sometimes. Also, we’re on the first floor, and there are nice things like trees and birds just outside the tall, barred windows. There are also not-so-nice things, like when the cleaners brush up all the dust in the carpets, or another co-worker’s daily fight with the printer.

But now we’re moving back to our former digs, more or less. In fact, everyone who’s going has already gone. I’m the only one left, because my computer, an ancient PC dating from the Bush years if carbon tests can be believed, isn’t going with me. Who knows what awaits me there? I’ve been in this position for over ten years now, so perhaps a little variety wouldn’t hurt. Fortunately there is lots of wood around here to knock on as I say this.

In addition to becoming tired of Facebook, I’m also getting a little tired of Flickr. I’ve administered HCSP for years now, and I have to admit I’m somewhat frustrated with the whole thing. It’s repetitive, dealing with wave after wave of people coming in to knock down some Aged Pillar of the Street Photography they’ve imagined is Blocking Progress by Not Recognizing Their Genius or something. It’s just a flickr group, after all, and to be honest I was never actually solid in my commitment to street photography, which I personally think is not even a real thing, or shouldn’t be, as all of the definitions of it that mean anything describe what it’s not. It’s mostly become an excuse for bad photography for the great majority of its practitioners.

In any case, I’ve made most of my photos private, and I’ve parred down the groups I belong to as well. Too often I feel, in the context of “real” photographers I encounter there and on FB, that I am just faking it. I’m not really a photographer, because I can’t bring myself to be interested in most of what they’re talking about. I enjoy good photography. I enjoy the emotions I have when I see good photography, and I enjoy taking photos. That’s about it. Everything else just seems…extraneous lately.

Or perhaps I’m just tired; it’s just been a long, hot, muggy summer full of record temperatures and seemingly frequent disasters, including plane crashes and exploding cities. I need a break. Fortunately, I will be doing just that at the end of this month, embarking on a trip to Tokyo for a week. Why, you ask? To be in Tokyo for a week. To do what? To be in Tokyo. That’s it. Oh, I’ll walk around, and perhaps take a photo or two if I see anything, but mostly just to see what it’s like in warm weather. Oh, and I also plan to meet some people I know there, such as my old film school classmate Yas, my friend Louis, and some other friends I met who are in the publishing business there, and possibly Daido Moriyama, if he’s around and up for it. I wish my attempts to pick up some Japanese had stuck, alas.

I’m also going to Paris in November, but that will be more business stuff, because we’ve been invited to exhibit at Paris Photo. We’ve also been invited to the MAP festival in Toulouse as well as the Brighton Biennial, but I only have so much time off, so Paris it is. Also, Chenbl and Ewan are tagging along, so it’s probably going to be a crazy ride full of touristy travails a la our last trip to Osaka. Also, it will be cold.

The Ramblers are once again on the scene after David came back from his six-month-long journey around the world, so we’ve been busy with shows lately. It’s good to get back into that scene; I was getting a little tired of just playing along to Spotify playlists at home, worrying that my neighbors would complain. In fact, Chenbl’s been inspired to take up not only the flute but also violin, and I’ll be accompanying him and a fellow student this weekend for one of their student concerts. The venue is a horribly echo-ey school atrium area, and it’s bound to be both swelteringly hot and cacophonous, but, well, it’s just another one of those things I never talked about. Until now.

Lately I’ve been spending my afternoon breaks over at the Futai Mansion near the North Gate, looking at all of the photography books on display there before the exhibition ends at the end of July. It’s an impressive collection, larger than I’ve found at bookstores here or at the library. There are chairs to sit in, and it’s usually quiet with only the occasional passerby glancing in. Typically I can get through a book a day, though some of the more interesting ones have taken a couple of days to really appreciate. Others I get through very quickly, for reasons I will explain below.

I’ve found is that there is no relationship between the quality and size of the books to the quality of the images within. Large, well-bound tomes with hundreds of large prints contain the most dreadfully boring photos, while coming across truly interesting Taiwanese photography seems to be a matter of chancing upon a small mention of someone in a random collection, with smaller, poorly edited selections that require the reader to seek other mentions in other books, which is often in vain.

Photography in Taiwan seem to have more or less always been stuck in such a rut, leaving anyone seeking to develop outside the Confucian system of “master photographers” out in the cold, unsupported and all-too-often foundering without any objective reviews or guidance from the community. The only commentary one could level at the “masters” was praise if you wanted to get anywhere, and anyone else wasn’t worth the time to even denigrate; ignoring them completely was a far more destructive weapon. Ironically, Taiwan itself would come to be largely ignored by the rest of the world due to political concerns.

The deleterious effects of this “system” are obvious in looking at the work being celebrated up until the 1990’s or so. For a long time, any photography was good photography, simply because a camera cost as much as a house, to nothing of film and developing costs, and photography was therefore even more rare and precious than it was in Western nations at the time. Of the renowned “Three Musketeers” of old, namely Chang Tsai, Deng Nan-guang and Lee Ming-tiao, only Lee, the longest-surviving of the three, had a solid sense of composition and emotion, while the others were more or less famous for their resistance to the attraction of the “salon” school of studio photography that was the rage at the time rather than the quality of their work. One of the most promising photographers of the 60’s, Huang Po-chi, virtually gave up photography to concentrate on his job as a doctor. It makes me wonder how many other photographers gave up their dreams in the face of such barriers over the decades.

A wave of “new school” photographers came on the scene following the lifting of martial law, coinciding, as it happens, with my arrival on our fair island, but the quality of their work was erratic and often either abstract for abstraction’s sake or poor shadows of documentary. There was seemingly no way of reviewing their own work. One particularly revealing collection I examined contained the works of Liu Chen-hsiang, Lian Hui-lin, Yeh Ching-fang, Hou Tsung-hui, Kao Chung-li, Chien Yong-pin, Pan Hsiao-hsia, Liang Cheng-chu and, of course, Chang Chao-tang. I know some of these photographers, but there was one photographer in the bunch whose work stuck out, and that was Yeh Ching-fang. His photos are not only well-composed, they aren’t boring. He was able to capture the essence and gravitas of everyday scenes with elegance and emotion. He didn’t seem to be photographing out of a sense of obligation, just because he could, but because he saw differently, he saw well.

It’s a shame that Yeh Ching-fang led such a destructive lifestyle that eventually killed him in 2005, because he is the best Taiwanese photographer I have ever come across.

I scoured the collection for more of Yeh’s work, but aside from a couple of small books there was precious little of it, though large volumes had been dedicated to someone’s mediocre snaps, or cows, or orchids, or whatever. One would think that the situation would be different today, and had Yeh lived, his work would now be recognized and supported by the outside world via the Internet, and he might have been able to reveal Taiwan and our society to the world.