For Lin Kuo-chang (林國彰), the true nature of Chinese culture is not to be found in the National Palace Museum, but in a greasy noodle stand run by men in undershirts. Or in a bawdy singer wearing a red mini-dress and fruit-decked hat. Or in the grin of a father showing off his baby on an outing at the zoo. It is to be found in the fragments of daily life that he captures with his camera.
As a newspaper photographer, Lin is less concerned with the drama of the news, with violence, catastrophe, or social conflict, than with everyday society. He thinks of each photograph as a "shard of reality." By adding up enough shards, a larger picture of reality emerges. "The only thing a photographer has to do is to see; he does not have to worry about whether what he has seen has anything to do with himself," Lin says, quoting the well-known American photographer Lee Friedlander. "As for the audience's reaction, that's not a concern. By thinking this way, I feel I am free to take any picture, with no restrictions and no expectations. There are pictures to take everywhere."
Lin's approach has won him awards, helped him land jobs, and for almost two decades brought his pictures to newspaper readers all over the island. But perhaps above all, it has led to a body of work that is a valuable document of the day-to-day life of Taiwan.
For Lin, creating such a document is vital for the future. He finds the traditional environment quickly evaporating, with old customs dying out, old buildings being torn down. He is eager to record it all before it is lost. That's why he took out his camera last year to shoot images of the old Chunghua Market and its day-by-day destruction to make way for Taipei's rapid transit system. Or why he has been drawn to the images of temple festivals—in one telling photograph, the traditional festival activities take place under the gaze of huge, modern-day movie posters. By focusing on these small facets of life, the photographer hopes he can save something of what is being lost.
One of Lin's most representative pictures, which won an award in the 1987 World Press Photo Competition, is titled "Chinese Fast Food." It shows an unusual angle of a typical Taiwanese-style roadside restaurant in Taipei, with overworked cooks stirring their woks for a group of construction workers, their hardhats set off to the side. The picture, which won in the contest's "daily life" section, is unflattering but fascinating in its simple realism, showing the foodstand as it is, dirty and dingy and an integral part of its surroundings. Here, too, is a hint of the transformation taking place in society. The foodstand itself looks like it might be part of a demolition project. The cooks work below, awkwardly separated by a cement ceiling from their customers, who may well be involved in tearing down some old building to make way for a new one.
Although Lin's subjects are ordinary people doing ordinary things, as fellow photographer Hsu Jen-hsiu (徐仁修) points out, he is able to isolate what is unique in the midst of the crowd. He catches people, for example, at the moment they make an unusual gesture or reveal a telling expression on their faces. "I'm not talking about those who easily catch our eye," he says, "but those who are special only to the camera's eye." Lin's photos are not highly dramatic or provocative; instead they create a bond with humanity. Hsu makes a parallel with his own photos of plants, which focuson wildflowers and weeds, rather than flowers that are flashy or visually impressive. "These are things people seldom notice," he says, "except for those with a 'photographer's eye.'"
Like many photographers of his generation in Taiwan, 44-year-old Lin is self-taught.When he was growing up, photography was still a new field and there were few opportunities to learn. For a youth in southern Taiwan, cameras were not even readily available. "I only had a few chances to borrow cameras from friends," Lin says. "I took pictures of my family and classmates in a very primitive way. The exposure was never right, and the people at the photo store always laughed at me." Even in college, Lin was not inspired to take up photography seriously. Instead, he studied agricultural chemistry, although without much enthusiasm for the subject. After graduating, he returned home to take over the family noodle-making business, but with instant noodles just on the market, it was difficult to compete. In 1975, his family closed shop and moved to Taipei. Because he had poor hearing, the result of a childhood illness, Lin had a hard time finding a job and depended largely on his family for support.
But then the big inspiration came. He happened to attend an exhibition and lecture on "reportage photography" at the American Cultural Center in Taipei, which then housed one of the city's few galleries. He was impressed by what photojournalist Wang Hsin (王信) had to say about her work, describing it as an important source of information for society. Previously, Lin had only thought of photography as something done by a photo salon or as family snapshots. "I never knew that photography could carry such a profound meaning and function," he says. "I also learned that a photograph could be like a shard of reality, something that records current social change. It could cover everything, beautiful or ugly, warm or cold. I felt it was a decent profession to pursue."
Lin started to prepare himself for his new calling. He took to the streets and learned alone, by trial and error. From the very beginning, his approach to taking pictures was marked by a sense of the common realities found in daily life. "I liked to wander in the streets, along Chunghsiao East Road or in Hsimenting near the train station, and take pictures of people I didn't know," he says. "I was familiar with the street landscape. It didn't change much. But the people would come and go. That was an interesting phenomenon."
Lin wandered like this for months, always looking for something to shoot. He tried attending classes at one of the new photo studios that were popping up in Taipei, but his hearing problem made it a frustrating experience. "I could only understand half of what the teacher said," he recalls. "Sometimes I would end up with a very twisted interpretation." Instead of taking more classes, he started to learn by reading—but not just specialized photography books. Lin was looking for something more than technical advice, for some kind of vision to bring to his photography, something he might find in poetry and fiction. He was especially attracted to the realistic approach of many new writers at that time, who were turning back to their own Taiwanese roots for inspiration. "'Native soil literature' has had a great influence on me," he says. "History and folk culture are also my favorites. They have helped me a lot in discovering more profound visual images."
Lin finally landed his first job at the China Economic News Service in 1976. But although he was chosen because of an impressive photo portfolio, the position was actually as an art designer rather than a photographer. He worked at the job for three years, during which time he married one of his co-workers. But there was no time for taking the kinds of pictures he liked. "I almost gave up photography," he says. "Then one day I felt I could not continue the life I was leading, so I quit the job."
Lin expected to work and pursue his interest on the side. Instead, his photography career quickly took off when he was hired as staff photographer and writer for Outdoor Life, a leisure magazine. There, he was able to begin polishing his vision of recording the society and culture around him. Within a year, he had completed two long articles, with photos and text, one on a local temple festival in the old city of Lukang and one on a festival held by the Ami, one of Taiwan's indigenous tribes.
Eager for more challenges, Lin left the magazine for a short stint at the Commercial Times, where he took pictures for the management and entertainment sections of the newspaper. Then he moved to the China Times, one of Taipei's major dailies, and worked on a section that seemed most appropriate to his ideas about photography, the "daily living" section. He has stayed with the paper since, and last year was promoted to photo editor for the arts and culture section. From the start, Lin's work at the China Times provided a chance to explore a wide range of subjects and to refine his ideas about photography. "It gave me a huge environment to work in," he says. "The readers were not just in Taipei but all over the island. My boss encouraged me to go outside Taipei. From the constant contact with people from different walks of life, I can learn to understand and appreciate the ways people live."
In developing his style, Lin has been influenced by several contemporary foreign photographers. Among these are Lee Friedlander, who has a similar fragment-like approach, and the American Mary Ellen Mark. He likes Mark's works for their straightforward look at people living outside the mainstream of life. "She took pictures of 'unfamous' people, like young prostitutes, the handicapped, and circus entertainers," Lin explains.
He also admires Josef Koudelka of Czechoslovakia, whose stark pictures of gypsies or gypsy-like wanderers are marked by a sense of loss and estrangement. Like Koudelka, Lin prefers to shoot his pictures in an everyday setting, and to use a wide-angle lens to capture a more inclusive view of the subject. "We both like to photograph people in landscapes, to present people in relation to the environment that surrounds them," Lin says. He particularly dislikes it when the background and foreground of a picture are cut in order to focus on an individual, as is often done in photos of entertainment celebrities. "People cannot separate themselves from the environment," Lin says. "If you want to isolate them in a picture, why don't you just bring them to the studio?"
Whereas Lin does not like to separate people from the world, he often separates them from themselves. One recurring feature of his work is the frequent presence of fragmented body parts—a hand, a pair of legs, or a head often steal into his pictures, frequently as a point of primary visual focus. The effect is sometimes natural, sometimes mysterious, some times jarring. In one picture, a group of karaoke singers is framed by two pairs of legs stretched out in the foreground, summing up the lazy, relaxed atmosphere. In another, a close-up of a temple door is accented by the head of an old woman who is passing by at the lower corner edge of the picture. She is not really a part of the scene, and yet she is. Another recurring image is an outstretched arm with pointing finger. Often we cannot see whose hand it is or the object pointed at. The picture becomes a question and answer at the same time. "I often feel like a surgeon," Lin says in describing these kinds of photos. "The camera is like my knife and I am cutting the body."
Above all, the fragmented arms and legs are not meant to be edited from the photograph before it is printed. "I don't like my pictures to be cut," Lin insists. "It is better to leave alone what you have seen. If there is something you don't want to include in your picture, you should try every means to exclude it before you press the shutter." Lin also does not believe in manipulating images in the dark room. His only tool is the camera—and his ability to catch the right moment on film. "Photographers suffer limitations," he says. "You cannot change a picture or redo it. Maybe some photographers will try to change it, but that's not what I do. To make the best of it, I can wait."
Cheng Lin-chung (鄭林鐘), who has worked as an editor with Lin at both the Commercial Times and ChinaTimes, agrees that his photos are difficult to cut. But Lin's method creates more than just a sense of compositional control and structure. "His pictures give me a feeling of pressure and confinement," Cheng says. "They are often very tight and twisted."
At times, Lin also brings a sense of social consciousness to his photography. It is an approach that he calls "instructive," not just "informative." Such a photograph acts not merely as a record or document, but offers some greater truth about the reality it exposes. One example is a recent feature story that Lin and a writer did on the large number of underage prostitutes in Hualien, eastern Taiwan. He photographed a group of young former prostitutes, all belonging to Taiwan's indigenous tribes, at the Shanmu Center halfway house. He took the same approach as usual, simply showing fragments of their daily lives. One of them speeds by on a bicycle with a teddy bear strapped to her back, suggesting not only how young these girls are, but their lost innocence. Her image is partly covered by a fence, suggesting the sense of imprisonment that has characterized her life. Another picture shows the girls praying before a meal, the dishes lined up in military-like formation down the middle of the table.
Later, Lin learned that the director of the halfway house had been attacked by a group of pimps, and he followed up with more photos. His pictures and the accompanying story attracted attention from both the public and the government. The premier even visited the director in the hospital, and many people donated money to the home. "I often ask myself questions," Lin says. "In what way can a visual image help improve society? Can it truly depict reality? Can it give a more complete message? Can it lead people to self reflection?"
Whereas Lin takes a serious attitude toward his work, he finds many photojournalists in Taiwan are the opposite—unprofessional and lazy. "Some of them lack self-respect and respect for their work," he says. As an example, he cites the common practice of news photographers covering for each other by borrowing and loaning pictures. As a result, it is not uncommon for the same photo to appear in several different newspapers on the same day, each credited to a different person. Lin does give credit, however, to some younger photographers who are eager to develop an identity and style of their own. "Among them, we do see a greater variety of approaches and ideas," he says.
In the meantime, Lin continues to act as a valuable role model for photojournalists who take their work seriously. And he continues to keep a sharp watch on the world around him. Says photographer Ruan Yi-chung (阮義忠), "Lin's pictures preserve in a powerful way the simple side of life in Taiwan. On the other hand, he reveals implicitly the changing values and attitudes of society." Lin himself offers a simpler description of his work: "To me, it is a way of looking."