Thanks to its ethnic diversity, Taiwan has become, in effect, a pantheon in which people with different religious traditions commune with a wide array of spirits and deities through solemn rituals and pilgrimages as well as through festive temple fairs and other activities.
Over the past 20-odd years, photographer Huang Ting-sheng has photographed more than 500 religious festivals and rituals of the Taiwanese people. His passion for preserving images of such activities for posterity was sparked, initially, by the discovery that other interested observers mostly produced only scholarly written records.
Photography of religious activities presents its own set of problems, including sensitivity to taboos and having to work amid teeming crowds. Through patient study and devotion to the “gods of photography,” Huang has risen to the challenge and created a moving pictorial archive of the myriad ways through which humanity melds the mundane and the celestial.
Huang Ting-sheng
Devotees set off firecrackers in the path of a palanquin bearing Chaotian Temple’s holy icon of Ma Zu, the Goddess of the Sea, during a joyous parade through the streets of Beigang Township, Yunlin County. Many regard Ma Zu, who is also known as the Queen of Heaven, as Taiwan’s chief guardian spirit. (Photo by Huang Ting-sheng)
Embodying the spirit of Hu Yeh (the deity “Master Tiger”), Chaotian Temple devotees brave a sea of exploding fireworks as they accompany the tiger god’s icon on a jaunt around Beigang Township, Yunlin County. (Photo by Huang Ting-sheng)
Incorporating wild boar tusks and eagle feathers, the totemic headdress of the chief of the indigenous Rukai people in Pingtung County is a power object believed to bring good hunting. (Photo by Huang Ting-sheng)
Performers dressed up as the Twelve Grand-aunties, guardian angels whose special mission is to look after women and children, are a common fixture in Taoist temple celebrations and ritual processions in southern Taiwan. (Photo by Huang Ting-sheng)
What started out centuries ago as a form of entertainment for children has become a skilled craft in Taiwan. At outdoor fairs featuring traditional foods and crafts—during temple festivals, for example—one can often witness sculptors deftly creating statuettes of mythological figures or beasts out of dough right before one’s eyes. (Photo by Huang Ting-sheng)
Temple festivals would be incomplete without brightly painted bamboo-frame paper lanterns like this one, which is receiving the final touches from a master craftsman in Lugang Township, Changhua County. (Photo by Huang Ting-sheng)
Children at a fair at Baoan Temple in Taipei discover what great skill it takes to be competitive in the top-spinning games played by their grandparents. (Photo by Huang Ting-sheng)