"I've not done badly:
" Still full of vitality despite her almost seventy years, when Chen Li-hung looks back on her life, she says "I've not done badly." When asked how she has been able to hold a place of honor in the male-dominated world of photography for so many decades, she thought for a moment with her head to one side, then said with traditional Chinese feminine shyness: "By putting everything into my work, I suppose!"
In the eyes of her family and friends, Chen Li-hung's life has certainly not followed the path traditionally mapped out for a Chinese woman. If she has any regrets, is not having married one of them?
Chen Li-hung never married, but there was a time in her youth when she made wedding plans.
He was from Penghu, a graduate of Meiji University in Japan, well-mannered and sophisticated; they had met at a dinner party and got on like a house on fire. Unusually in those straightlaced days, he not only had nothing against Chen Li-hung studying in Japan, he approved of her working in photography, a business seen by many as unsuitable for a woman because it involved "showing one's face in public," and he often gave her words of encouragement. But when World WarII broke out, he was conscripted and sent to the South China Sea, and never came back. "They say that a lot of them caught strange diseases there; when they died they were dismembered and cremated, and their ashes sent back to their families in Taiwan." But in his case, she says faintly, "not even his ashes came back."
Reminded of him, Chen Li-hung can only say over and over again: "It was such a pity!" Fifty fleeting years on, she says, "Now I just sing karaoke, and I forget about everything!"
So unsentimental in everyday life, when she stands in the karaoke club and sings the Japanese song "A Man's Pure Love," who can discern whether a tear wets her eye?
[Picture Caption]
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(photo by Vincent Chang)
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Chen Li-Hung studied photography in Japan. This is a commemorative photo taken in front of the Toyo school; the year is 1943.
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Chen Li-hung (first at right) had only three other female classmates. During the Japanese occupation, female photographers were rare indeed.
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This is a photo of Chen in her home before retrocession.
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Chen was especially skilled at using advertising to attract business, a point rarely thought of by male competitors.
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Women dressed as men were the fashion of the times; this is a photo of Chen herself.
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Chen Li-hung's graduation work: She made a black and white photo into a color one, showing her skilful retouching.
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A color photo taken of a customer by Chen Li-hung. The lighting technique is mid-level, creating a richly soft effect.