When the business of coloring photos began emerging in Taiwan, many portrait painters joined this business and became colorists. With their talents, they gave color to black-and-white photos. The quality and aesthetics of coloration had much to do with the social and cultural atmosphere at that time. Manual retouching and coloration relied on the excellent skills of the photographers and colorists, and through their meticulous efforts, human figures became spirited and lively after being given brilliant colors.
Li Wang-Hsiu was a portrait painter and father of Li Cheng-Ji, who is a member as well as the founder of the Miaoli Photography Association and Hard-Neck Photographers Group. Li Wang-Hsiu went to northern Taiwan to learn photography right after he finished elementary education, and when he was twenty years old, he returned to Miaoli and set up Yu Guan Photography Studio in Nanchuan, which emphasized manual coloration. The Studio’s history of more than six decades is imprinted in the minds of many old people in Nanchuan. These precious manually colored photos demonstrated the aesthetics of this profession as well as the lifestyles of people at that time.
Collection of the National Center of Photography and Images
Shiy De-Jinn was born in 1923, in Sichuan, China. He completed his art education in the Hangzhou College of Arts. Shiy’s art stood out by applying the form of ink painting in watercolor painting. He was especially good at portraying human figures. His fast and precise drawing and unique style were greatly admired. In this painting, the woman with very cleverly cut short hair evokes a modern impression, and the angle of the composition is believed to be influenced by the portrait photography at that time.
Since the invention of photography in the beginning of the 19th century, photographers imitated the styles of paintings to emphasize the visual effects. Likewise, painters often absorbed the realism techniques from photography to enrich the elements or details of their artworks. Today, photos often replace the posing models in figure drawing classes and become the reference for painters and the medium for communication.Collection of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts
Shiy De-Jinn was born in 1923, in Sichuan, China. He completed his art education in the Hangzhou College of Arts. Shiy’s art stood out by applying the form of ink painting in watercolor painting. He was especially good at portraying human figures. His fast and precise drawing and unique style were greatly admired. In this painting, the woman with very cleverly cut short hair evokes a modern impression, and the angle of the composition is believed to be influenced by the portrait photography at that time.
Since the invention of photography in the beginning of the 19th century, photographers imitated the styles of paintings to emphasize the visual effects. Likewise, painters often absorbed the realism techniques from photography to enrich the elements or details of their artworks. Today, photos often replace the posing models in figure drawing classes and become the reference for painters and the medium for communication.Collection of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts
Lee Ming-Tiao’s photography mixed the styles of realism and glamor shots. He often traveled to suburbs of Taipei, like Wulai or Danshui, with his twin-lens Rolleiflex to catch scenes on the street, in rustic areas or waterfronts, such as children playing or people doing their daily chores. Female characters were a major theme of Lee Ming-Tiao’s photography. He would carefully arrange light and composition, or by plotting and directing he would set up scenes for his characters. With fondness, Lee Ming-Tiao represented a variety of facets of Taiwanese society and left us abundant images of plain but genuine lifestyles of people from that time.
Courtesy of Lee Dao-Chen
The chief of the Wan Li Photojournalism Club in Kaohsiung was Shih Wan-Li (1908~2008), who was born in northeastern China during the first year of the Emperor Xuantong. Shih Wan-Li founded the Wan Li News Agency in 1946, and in 1948 he came to Taiwan to exhibit news photography in an exposition and couldn’t go back home as China fell into the control of the Communist Party. In 1949, Shih Wan-Li settled down in Kaohsiung and started taking photos of Kaohsiung. In 1950, Wan Li News Agency began to operate in Taiwan, which is believed to be the earliest one in Taiwan. Devoting all his lifetime to photojournalism, Shih Wan-Li’s Agency left more than half a million film negatives.
Collection of the National Center of Photography and Images
Collection of the National Center of Photography and Images
Collection of the National Center of Photography and Images
Collection of the National Center of Photography and Images
Courtesy of Chang Song-Guang
Courtesy of Cheng-Kuo Chun-Ying
Courtesy of the Summergate Phototimes
Collection of the National Center of Photography and Images
BackThe Iteration of Gazing
With Japan defeated, World War II concluded in 1945, and Taiwan was returned to be ruled by the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China. Before the Nationalist Government relocated to Taiwan in 1949, photography magazines and newspapers emerged among citizen-initiated photography-related activities, and relevant discussions reached beyond techniques and further encompassed research on the aesthetics of photography. As a result of the promotion by amateurs and professionals, photography transformed into a fashionable hobby. Meanwhile, individuals who learned photography in Japan during the colonial period returned to Taiwan, taking on apprentices or establishing photography studios, also contributing to the growing number of photography enthusiasts. These aficionados would gather and share their works, which led to the establishment of camera clubs and salons. Portable and lightweight 135 film cameras became common and led to the trend of photography as an elegant pastime, while the camera’s portability and convenience enabled photography to become an ideal tool for observing the pulsation of society and the formation of cultural trends. From the gaze of the other to looking back and inwards at our own land, the works not only encapsulated the epitome of the past epoch but also propelled photography’s transformation into an art form. And that is precisely where we now stand—gazing at the trajectory and memory of Taiwan’s society in dim but shimmering light, witnessing their evolution and the echoing images of their times.
