Discovering Nanfang-ao

The forties and fifties were a period in which Nanfang-ao experienced great population inflows and outflows. According to local oral tradition as passed down by the town elders, evenings would bring an endless row of the disabled congregating at the night market by the port; the town's streets were filled with even more people. Men made up most of the population in those days, and to cater to these consumers, Nanfang-ao at one point had three theaters and twenty-some teahouses. You could say that the streets were bustling, and even within the doorways and courtyards, things were as busy as a marketplace.

In the sixties, the fishing industry declined as a result of depleted resources. Young people had lost the zeal for engaging in the rousing yet risky life of the seafarer. On top of that, with the rise in jobs available on land, even the fishermen no longer encouraged their younger brothers and sons to take on this harsh life. People streamed out of Nanfang-ao like a crowd scattering after a theater performance. Nanfang-ao's population declined from its peak of thirty-some thousand to its present level of around 12,000. Aside from the older workers already plying this trade, hard-working and longsuffering native Taiwanese workers, overseas laborers coming from afar, as well as Chinese fishing workers docked in port now made up the mainstay of the manpower needed to haul up the nets and transport the fish.

The sea's gifts to Nanfang-ao have included not merely economic wealth and experience, but also wisdom and inspiration, and a sense of life's grandeur and expansiveness. Throughout the long process of photographing Nanfang-ao, I found that the more I came to understand the place and its surroundings, the more I was able to shed my own illusions and anxieties. I started out by seizing images of the various corners of Nanfang-ao as they presented themselves to me, moving on to capture the unique feel of its environs. This allowed me to depict the essence of Nanfang-ao in a visual idiom and in turn fashion these images into a symphony of life.

About the Photographer

Shen Chao-liang was born in Tainan, Taiwan in 1968. He graduated from Shih Hsin University, studying film editing and directing. Afterwards, Chen studied visual arts in Japan, and while based

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A fisherman with a whale shark weighing over 2000 kilograms. (November 1997)

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On the docks, workers are busy building a new boat; the frame has already been completed. (September 1999)

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An elderly craftsman mending a fishing net. (May 1998)

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An old grandmother and her little granddaughter on one of the main streets of Nanfang-ao. (December 1996)

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A view of the harbor. (October 1996). there, also served as a consulting editor for the advertising magazine ADM. He currently works as a photojournalist for the visual arts section of the Liberty Times. Chen's photography has been featured in the Liberty Times, Sinorama Magazine, The Earth, and New Idea. In October 1999 he held a one-man show in the fnac photo gallery, and in 2000, he received a gold medal for magazine photography. His publications include Brand 9: An Analysis of Creativity at the World's Nine Best-Selling Brand Names