In fact, Huang's series of photos taken at this location in the capital's Wanhua District is characterized by the lack of festivities and happy, boisterous atmosphere normally associated with the busy temple. This contradictory situation later caught the attention of photographer Suan Hooi-wah, a Malaysian Chinese who, having met his Taiwanese wife while studying in Tokyo, emigrated to Taiwan in 1980. Suan included Huang's work in his exhibition "The First Photo Gallery of Taiwan--A Legend of Rose Marie," which went on display at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum May 19 and runs through July 15.
The idea for the project came from a passage in a photography magazine that mentioned "Taiwan's first private photo gallery." Suan read about it years ago, he explained May 30, and the idea of tracking it down remained on his mind. Together with other photographers and researchers, Suan submitted a project proposal to the National Culture and Arts Foundation and, having been funded to the tune of US$32,000, spent 18 months tracking down the gallery and collecting rapidly disappearing photos from its era, the 1950s and 60s.
These Suan also presented in a book accompanying the exhibition titled "A Legend of Rose Marie." Intriguingly, the top right corner of the book is missing--giving every page an irregular pentagonal shape--and the front and back covers, spine and page-edges are all colored black. Suan, who took credit for the book's unusual design, explained that the missing corner symbolized that the Rose Marie story was still incomplete, while the black color represented the dark mysteries that remained to be discovered.
Suan's quest for the "first gallery" mentioned by the magazine took him to No. 114 Bo-ai Road in the heart of old Taipei. Now a clothing store, it had long ago been a restaurant or cafe called Rose Marie owned by a certain Chen Yan-bin. Chen himself moved to live in Canada many years ago and subsequently passed away, so finding information about him, the cafe and the gallery had been difficult, Suan said. No one even knew with certainty the significance of the name Rose Marie, although it was believed that Chen had previously run a business under a similar name in Shanghai, his pre-civil war hometown.
The first two floors of the four-story building housed the eating place, Suan was told. "It was a posh cafe, selling cups of coffee for around US$0.04. Although this might not sound very much today, back then it could buy a catty of rice." Apparently, Chen was both reasonably wealthy, as well as generous, and, since he was interested in photography, he opened a gallery on the fourth floor in 1953. In doing so--even though no one now had any photos taken by Chen himself--he should be considered an important contributor to the development of photography in Taiwan in the postwar years, Suan claimed.
"At that time, it would have been almost impossible for young photographers to exhibit their work in public exhibition spaces such as Zhongshan Hall," he added, explaining that photography was not yet recognized as an art form or worthwhile profession. Furthermore, photography was under constant surveillance by the government, which restricted public images to certain themes, such as social scenes that might lead to unrest or the depiction of women in swimsuits. Controversial issues could be shown at Rose Marie, however, since it was a private gallery.
Chen offered a venue for unknown photographers to show their work, Suan said. By creating a photo-friendly environment where professionals and amateurs could exchange ideas over a free cup of coffee and snacks, Chen also indirectly helped promote the establishment of many photographic societies. Established photographers offered advice to their younger colleagues, and lectures and competitions were held by the burgeoning clubs, Suan said.
The photographs they took became the quarry of Suan's search. Most were not the works of professionals but of people who took pictures in their spare time and even at work. One of the latter, Yang Cang-ji, a retired teacher from Taipei's Laosong Elementary School, photographed his pupils throughout his 40-year teaching career. His series of photos in the exhibition and included in the book show innocent smiles and young bodies. One work titled "Unity is Strength" depicts a group of boys creating a human tower. The children's open mouths and happy expressions enable viewers to almost hear their excited voices. "Sometimes pictures are more powerful than words," Suan said, adding that people did not need a special aesthetic education to appreciate photographs and that photographs also played the role of historical record.
Explaining this last point, Suan said that, by examining photographs carefully to spot hidden clues, one could learn about the development of a local community and the conditions of its people. "We should not just look at photos but learn to 'read' pictures," he said. This involved understanding the main theme, composition and background of the image, as well as things like the quality of paper used to make prints. Every photograph contained both the things the photographer wished to say and the things he said inadvertently.
To illustrate his point, Suan chose Yang Tien-szu's work "Hurry Up," which depicted a woman, a child and a man holding hands walking toward Taipei's western Ximending district, not too far from Bo-ai Road. "From this picture, we can assume that the child must belong to a well-to-do family because he is wearing shoes," Suan said, suggesting that in the early postwar period, most children walked around in bare feet.
The project as a whole aimed to take people back to what it was like in Taiwan in the 1950s and 60s. With today's government emphasizing ideas of localization, Suan said, "This is just the right kind of image of Taiwan."
Yang's camera also captured a group of rickshaw riders pedaling hard to take their fares across a bridge, and another rickshaw rider waiting under the hot sun for a customer. In another photo, a man carrying a woman on the back of his motorbike speeds past the camera. The woman is elegantly dressed and sits sidesaddle. Together this series presents an idea of the choice of transportation available in Taiwan in that period.
Other photos in the exhibition shed light on fashions of the day, such as the long "cheongsam" dresses whose floral motifs and one-piece designs flattered a woman's figure. Suan said that male photographers, like most men, enjoyed taking beautiful women on outings. One such was film-company owner Lee Ming-tiao, whose amateur shots included a series of women's portraits, mostly taken in cheongsam. Nevertheless, Suan added, "Generally, women were not supposed to be filmed in public at that time," and suggested they were most likely working as escorts. Lee's series even included a picture of an unnamed woman wearing a swimsuit at the beach, which would have been impossible to find at that time. "Social norms in the 1950s were still very conservative," Suan explained, "and there were also many restrictions under martial law."
It may well have been dissatisfaction with the restraints on photographers under the 1949-1987 Martial Law Period, the most serious episode being known as the White Terror era, that Huang was using his camera to express. In the busy Lungshan Temple, he chose to photograph old men staring with open eyes or dozing off leaning against a wall. Their lips were sealed; they had nothing to say or did not dare say it. Against this dismal background and repressive political atmosphere, the Rose Marie Gallery offered a rare sanctuary for photographers to speak their minds.
Write to Sandra Shih at sandrashih@mail.gio.gov.tw