In the late forties and early fifties Teng Nan-kuang, Chang Ts'ai, and Li Ming-tiao were known as the Three Musketeers of Taipei photography. Chang's one-man exhibition of 1948, Li's monthly photo magazine, founded in 1951, and Teng's Liberty Photo Exhibition of 1954 broke new ground for realistic photography on Taiwan and inspired many talented up-and-coming photographers of the day.
Teng Nan-kuang was a highly respected and artistically distinguished leader of the new movement. The richness of his achievement and the length of his creative career can be matched by few, and his enthusiastic promotion of photographic activities on the island earned him the praise and admiration of many. But the limited number of his works seen in publications and exhibitions in the past revealed only a portion of his oeuvre, and his name and work seemed to slip into oblivion after his death in 1971.
It was only when I chanced upon the thousands of photos and negatives of his preserved in the home of his son Teng Shih-kuang, some for as many as fifty years, that I realized with a start that this giant of an earlier generation has been overlooked and neglected for far too long. The dozen or so photos of his printed here reveal that Teng possessed a wise and far-seeing vision as far back as half a century ago.
Teng Nan-kuang (whose original name was Teng T'eng-hui) was born in 1907 in Peipu Hsiang in Hsinchu County, in the west of Taiwan. At age 22 he went to Japan to study, later testing into economics department at Hosei University. There he became interested in photography and joined the university's photography club. His first camera was an antique-style Kodak, but he scrimped and saved, advancing to a Pipille Elmar 3.5 and finally a Leica A, his pride and joy, which he slept with next to his pillow during the five years he owned it.
Teng returned to Taiwan in 1935. Finding no suitable prospects for a career under Japanese rule, he decided to try to earn a living from the photography he had enjoyed as a student and set up the first photographic equipment store on Taiwan: the Nankuang Camera Equipment Shop on Po Ai Road in Taipei. From 1935 to 1944 he traveled all over the island, taking nearly 6,000 pictures of the people, places, and customs he found and compiling a broad record of the culture and society of the time. During this, his most productive period of activity, he used his camera almost as a pen to keep a photo-graphic diary, and he left behind a precious testimony of the way Taiwan was during the Japanese colonial era.
"The Mood in a Station Waiting Room" was shot in a little train station on the outskirts of Hsinchu. A pair of strangers sit on either end of a bench, absorbed each in their own thoughts and feelings. Bright light streaming in through the window and doorway softly illuminates the objects inside, setting off their mutual distance and depth.
The elegantly clad woman is the prime focus of Teng's concern. She, the man to her side, and the trash bucket in front of her form a triangle, the distance between the three points highlighting her feelings of isolation and unfamiliarity. The whole scene, actually a realistic glimpse of life in the thirties, seems to be a still shot from a film or the play. "The world's a stage" --although the figures are only sitting and thinking, the picture exudes dramatic tension and imaginative space.
"The Mood in a Station Waiting Room" is a comment not only on the feelings of the man and woman in the picture, but also on the patience and thought of the photographer, his romantic and forlorn soul.
"Swinging" is reminiscent of a photo of a young bride and groom on a swing taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson during the same period in France. The two figures neatly complement each other, one wearing a Chinese ch'i-p'ao and the other a Western suit, and their playful vitality is accented by the unusualness of their clothing and behavior. A paean to life and youth that reveals the photographer's wit and humor on the sunny beach at Tamsui. Their laughter seems to ring down half a century to us today.
The various positions, directions, and attitudes of the seven figures in "Tomb Sweeping Festival" subtly define their roles and relationships. At the same time, the tombstone, the umbrellas, the baskets, the offerings, the candle, the fedoras, and the spots of rain on the men's coats are full of rich focal interest and contrast. This kind of composition seems casual and disordered at first but is actually a sublime and purified representation of the untidiness of reality.
"Offering Incense," "Procession," and "Watching the Show" were all taken in 1935 during a religious festival in Teng's hometown of Peipu. In the layered effect of the pilgrims in "Offering Incense," the smoky haze of "Procession," and the angled viewpoint of "Watching the Show," Teng takes a participatory yet objective approach, creating expressive, realistic works close to pure documentary.
Teng's realistic photography is filled with warmth and understanding without sinking to coy sentimentality or covering up the harsh and ruthless side of life: witness the protective concern of "Brother and Sister," the tough indifference of "Opera Fans at Dusk," or the intimate honesty of "Smile." And in "Roaming Mother and Daughter," the girl's fixed stare, the sightless gaze of the blind singer, and the backward glance of the passerby create a touching yet firmly realistic effect, intimating the vulnerability of human life.
Kindly, hard working, and wrapped up in his creative work and photographic activities, Teng neglected his business and had to close the Nankuang Camera Equipment Shop in 1960. After that he worked as a medical photographer in the U.S. Navy's Second Medical Research Institute, but he continued to snap realistic photos outdoors in his spare time. He also began devoting his energies to forming an island-wide photographic society. Having overcome numerous obstacles and difficulties, he finally succeeded in founding the Taiwan Photographic Society in 1963. He was chosen as director of the society seven times in a row until his death from a heart attack in 1971.
Despite the long delay, the reappearance of his works today holds great significance for photography on Taiwan. I hope that Teng's works can be collected into a book and shown in a retrospective exhibition soon. They represent a glorious page in the history of photography on Taiwan and serve as a creative model for younger photographers.
[Picture Caption]
Teng Nan-kuang at age 60, 1967.
The Mood in a Station Waiting Room, 1938.
Swinging, 1938.
Tomb Sweeping Festival, 1938.
Offering Incense, 1935.
Procession, 1935.
Watching the Show, 1935.
Roaming Mother and Daughter, 1951.
Smile, 1953.
Brother and Sister, 1956.
Opera Fans at Dusk, 1957.
On the Dike, 1954.
The Mood in a Station Waiting Room, 1938.
Tomb Sweeping Festival, 1938.
Roaming Mother and Daughter, 1951.
Brother and Sister, 1956.
Opera Fans at Dusk, 1957.
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