Taiwan Today

Gabor Teveli is a Central European polyglot--born into a Francophile family in Hungary, he has Italian, German, Croatian and Hungarian ancestry. He was educated in French, which is his third language after Italian and Magyar, and picked up English later in life. After playing professional water polo for 12 years (on the Hungarian national team for four of them), he graduated with a degree in biogeography and a special interest in islands.

On a trip to Australia he discovered that photography was his metier and has since taken pictures all over the world and exhibited at home in Hungary, in Australia, Ecuador and Laos. His work in Laos won him a National Geographic Photography Award, and he is currently working on two book projects--one on the Si Pan Don region of southern Laos and the other on puppetry in Yunlin County, Taiwan.

The photographs on the following pages were taken in and around Taiwan's eastern coastal town of Hualien, Siaoliouciou Island off the coast of Pintung County and in Taipei. They capture the weathered and colorful faces of both people and landscapes that make up the rich visual panorama that is Taiwan.