Pan Hsiao-hsia's recent solo exhibition at the Huashan Culture Park, Taipei, "akemi a tangozan: Photographic Reportage of Ochid Island, 1980-2005" takes its title from a description of the photographer by Yami writer Syaman Rapongan. Meaning "like a dolphin fish," akemi a tangozan also chimed with the epithet "the dolphin fish of Taiwan's photographic circle" given him by fellow photographer and director of Tainan National University of the Art's Graduate Institute of Sound and Image Studies in Documentary, Chang Chao-tang.
According to Chang, the dolphin fish, also known as mahi-mahi, reflects Pan's audacious yet easy attitude when capturing scenes of Orchid Island. For his part, Pan seems happy to accept the description.
While visitors will not be surprised, therefore, to find several images of the fish featured among the 50 or so photographs shown at the July 15-27 exhibition, the large dried dolphin fish hanging in the center of the room as well as various other sea-dwellers--used by Pan to recreate the atmosphere of Orchid Island--might be less expected.
Other themes covered in the exhibition include the island's goats, tourists, Tao--an alternative name to Yami for the island's residents--elders, panapten men's loincloths, traditional festivals and a section on "Anito Banishment," which details the island's anti-nuclear movement. All are seen through Pan's unique eye.
As Syaman Rapongan wrote in his introductory notes for the exhibition: "Under his lens, goats, the most graceful and sacred animal for the Tao people, become a floating necklace on a giant rock. Images of elderly Tao people with their pure and melancholic expressions after spending their lifetime watching the sea inspire our endless imaginations. Canoes, the most concrete oceanic cultural asset of the Tao, remind one of the ancient vow taken between the ancestors and the god of the blackwing flyingfish and of the continuity of fishing culture."
Pan's long relationship with the island and its people--he has visited every year through his 25-year career, first as a newspaper photographer and then as an artist at the Hsiao Hsia Workshop--got off to a shaky start.
As Pan recounts on his Web site, "Influenced by Liu Qi Wei's books on Taiwanese aboriginal arts, I was feverishly attracted to those unique panapten, canoe, flying fish and rituals of Tao People and Orchid Island."
Consequently, traveling with a friend, in the summer of 1980 aged 26 he journeyed south to Kaohsiung then east by the southern cross-island highway to Taitung, before boarding a ferry at dawn the next day for the four-hour ride to Orchid Island.
He made friends on the boat with a local man "with dark cinnamon skin and a pair of big round eyes." After disembarking, they followed him up Hongtou Mountain to the "Tao paradise" of Yeyin village.
Over the next few days the two learned about traditional Tao customs and lifestyles, were moved by the primitive, simple and passionate Tao people, and quickly made friends. One night, some of these new friends, having caught groupers, lobsters and other seafood, invited him to enjoy rice wine with them. They all became very malashang, explained Pan, using the Tao word for drunk. As he turned to his bag for cigarettes, a breadfruit fell from a nearby tree. His Tao friends roared: "This is an unlucky stuff, throw it outside!" So he shrugged and threw it into a ditch outside. The next morning, half-awake, he heard women screaming, demanding to know who had brought the "devil fruit" into the village. Pan admitted that he had thrown it there, but after this accidental violation of Tao taboo, his local friends became aloof and he felt he should leave.
This experience also made him reflect deeply on how he should interact with the Tao people. For example, he had first arrived on Orchid Island as a young man filled with enthusiasm for reporting on and photographing the Tao people and the island, but he discovered that the islanders did not enjoy being the target of his lens. Elderly Tao people firmly believed that a camera could devour a man's soul. Taking photos without permission, he reports, could lead to verbal or even physical attack with rocks being thrown. Pan solved this problem by cultivating friendships slowly, and he attributes his ultimate success not only to his cameras but also to drinking round after round of rice wine or beer with locals.
While this might sound a little disingenuous, for Syaman Rapongan who has known the photographer for decades through the struggle for Taiwanese democracy and the movement for indigenous rights, Pan's approach was merely a sincere embodiment of his enduring passion toward indigenous people. Moreover, Pan's efforts also helped capture important historical developments during Orchid Island's modernization and move towards a tourist economy under policies promoted by the government since 1967.
Initiation of airline flights in 1970 and the opening of Kaiyuan Harbor in 1971 had both led to the "mysterious island" being unveiled and the beginning of its transformation into a tourist commodity. As the number of Taiwanese tourists increased, so did the erosion and violation of the traditional Tao lifestyle.
For many islanders this "modernization" went beyond acceptable limits in 1981 with the Taipower Company's decision to store nuclear waste on the island. This action reignited the nightmare they had previously experienced in 1958 when the ROC government, under the guise of "developing Orchid Island," built a prison to house Taiwanese criminals there. It also led to the development of an autonomous, locally based anti-nuclear movement, which is still active today.
Pan's exhibition includes "Anito Banishment," a section dedicated to photos shot during the anti-nuclear waste protest in 1988. Like many in the environmentalist movement, Pan considers Feb. 20, 1988, when large numbers of islanders demonstrated at the waste storage facility, the most inspiring day in the island's modern history of the Tao people.
Nevertheless, given Orchid Island's ongoing problems, Pan's "akmei a tangozan" exhibition represents both a celebration of Tao civilization and a reminder of issues still needing resolution.