Chang Chao-tang was born in 1943 in Ban­qiao, New Tai­pei City. As a photographer, writer, filmmaker and professor, ­Chang has been a key figure in promoting Taiwan’s photographic art and culture.

As a young high-school student, ­Chang just picked up a camera and started shooting. And he has never stopped. His career spanning more than half a century has encompassed photography, television, and both documentary and dramatic filmmaking. “Wherever you go, you’re on the scene,” is his characterization of the life of a photographer. Keeping in touch with the world, observing, thinking, and then catching the moment—his unique works reflect the pulse of the age, witnesses to the deep and profound beat of the times.

Several clear phases are evident in ­Chang’s work: “Images of Youth,” from his high school period; “Existential Voices,” when he was a university student; “Social Memory” and “Inner Landscapes,” from the start of his career to 2005; and “Digital Quest,” since 2005. The themes and techniques metamorphose from reality to unreality, from concrete to abstract, from traditional to digital, from black and white to color. As if time is like a meandering river, people transit eddies on the river, each transition presenting a scene from life.

Cultural worker Huang Yongsong, Beijing, 2006.

In the oppressive political climate of the 1960s, when photography and culture tended to be stifled and subdued, ­Chang read a great deal. His tastes encompassed modern Western literature, art, music, theater and film books, and he became deeply influenced by existential and surrealist ideas. As a result, his images integrated more surreal, absurd, alienated, and cold visual scenes to express and interpret the state of self and life as they were.

In the 1970s, ­Chang found work at a television station and began a 13-year career as a news cameraman and photo­journal­ist. He produced a number of documentary films on folk culture and on art as an aspect of every­day life. They were based on real-life stories, but with his ­editing and added music, he managed to convey something larger than life. Beginning in the mid-1980s, his photography gradually turned from societal memories toward inner landscapes. ­Chang parallels the movements and stances of his subjects with what’s happening in the picture, constantly varying the perspective, to portray a metaphor of life.

Digital cameras and cellphones were added to the list of his artistic tools in 2005. Because they’re light and small, he’s always ready when the opportunity strikes: “Wherever you go, you’re on the scene.” With this greater use of digital gear, Chang began to incorporate color into his work. He created two series: Images—Journey Beyond and Taiwan—And then Nuclear Disaster.... These were of different times, spaces and events, mosaics of scraps of a whole, springing and diving as if the artist is trying to tie together the dissembled memories of a dream, or the subconscious perhaps: something that may have existed in all our reminiscences. Does it come from a dream dimly remembered? Or perhaps it portrays a glimpse of the future.

­Chang’s works pose conundrums balanced between reality and unreality, inspiring the imagination to leap this way and that, straying dangerously from the mainstream, opening new doors for Taiwan’s modern photographers. From his observations of life, its values, its times and spaces, ­Chang’s images portray the transcendent with the familiar, affection against alienation, humor amidst the absurd. Sincerity, concern, empathy: of these is the artist’s message composed.

­Chang’s exhibition, Time: The Images of ­Chang Chao-tang presents over 400 works of photography from 1959 to today, as well as eight documentaries and television episodes, along with personal notes and articles by the artist. Together they bring us a complete picture of the artist’s aesthetic and achievements in image art.

Time: The Images of Chang Chao-tang, 1959–2013/Dates: 14 September – 29 December 2013/Venue: Taipei Fine Arts Museum