A fish turned belly up and a broken shoe stuck in the mud; a pair of wooden horses lying on the grounds of an abandoned amusement park; a cow's skull baking in the sun; a smiling Buddha surrounded by Buddha heads; a person laboring in a field in the cold wind; a tree limb testifying in its cracked surface to the inexorable passage of time; an abandoned car filled with miscellaneous objects in a forest at night; a bewildering shadow play in a mist of sulfur . . . these silent, solitary, and desolate images--reflections on scenes of the odd and the surrealistic--seem to set forth the aftermath of some catastrophe, the wreck of a paradise lost.
Seeking various ways out of the bottleneck of development in which realistic photography had found itself by the end of the 1960s, photographers on Taiwan gradually achieved a new look with a clearer and more mature vision by the middle of the 1970s. A prime example among them is Ch'en Shun-lai.
Where Ch'en surpasses the others is in his sharpness of focus, his tonal unity, and the power and success of his creation of atmosphere. The solitary, vacant objects in his pictures invariably contain a latent humanistic feeling, unlike the works of many other so-called "psycho-imagists," which consist of a mere composition of lines, tones, or forms lacking the force of inner conviction.
Ch'en Shun-lai was born in 1933 in the Wanhua district of Taipei and studied at the Taipei College of Business after graduating from Laosong primary school. It being natural in the conservative way of thinking of an earlier era to seek a steady line of work and stick to it for life, Ch'en worked successively at the First National Bank, the Cathay Co., and the Taipei Third Credit Cooperative, where he remains employed today. His occupational career and his cultivation of photography do not seem particularly well matched.
Ch'en recalls buying an old U.S. army camera long ago in a used goods store in Taipei and taking his first pictures, mostly souvenirs and mementos, with 127 air force film. During the mid-sixties, as he became acquainted with more fellow photography enthusiasts, he began to practice and improve himself in order to take part in competitions, and several of his works earned citations in municipal and provincial contests. During the 1970s, under the influence of the Liming photo exhibition and his fellow members in the Pingtung photography club, he gradually began selecting scenic fragments that express a state of consciousness as subjects.
For visual creativity and striking effects, photographers often comb through nature for odd-looking images. Scenes of the fragmentary and the desolate, the absurd and the obscure, became the particular favorites of Ch'en.
Filming these images in black and white, besides cleansing the expressive contents by filtering out the disturbance of inappropriate hues, also gives them a special quality feel, a graininess, a tonal contrast, and a layering effect all unachievable by color as well as concentrating their feelings of emptiness, repression, and intensity in a way that only black and white can.
The pictures of other "psycho-imag-ists" often seem thin in conception, narrow in range, and flavorless in feeling. But Ch'en's series of works tie together in significance, display a broad viewpoint, and are charged with humanist feeling, being neither removed from reality nor constricted by artificial rules, and enabling them to serve as a model for imagistic photography. Ch'en's accomplishment in this regard validates his decades-long devotion to his craft.
Ch'en believes that capturing the essence of a scene through the camera or charging it with deeper significance depends on a photographer's ability and powers of penetration, along with a willingness to be constantly on the move, looking for the right light and the proper moment, as well as a capacity to compose and reflect. Facing a scene from nature he at the same time faces his own innermost thoughts and feelings; there is solitude, but there is also freedom and spontaneity. Taking photographs gives him just that kind of creative joy.
Read in the light of contemporary trends, Ch'en's work may seem no longer fresh or original in conception and rather to await further exploration of its potential. But among the paths taken by Taiwan photographers in the 1960s, Ch'en's development, from amateur realistic photographer to a sketcher of imagistic scenery, can be considered representative. Compared with the work of many others of his generation, his oeuvre has a more contemporary feel and flavor and a firmer grasp of style and atmosphere that leaves us musing on symbols pregnant with significance as we wander on the borderline within and beyond reality.
[Picture Caption]
Ch'en Shun-lai at age 44.
Peihsinchuang in Tamsui, 1968.
Tungkang in Pingtung, 1978.
Hsintien Amusement Park, 1970.
Tamsui, 1973.
Pali, 1983.
Fokuangshan in Kaohsiung, 1973.
Peitou, 1985.
Shihkang in Taichung, 1977.
Aoti, 1984.
Hell Valley in Peitou, 1972.
Peihsinchuang in Tamsui, 1968.
Tungkang in Pingtung, 1978.
Hsintien Amusement Park, 1970.
Fokuangshan in Kaohsiung, 1973.
Shihkang in Taichung, 1977.
Hell Valley in Peitou, 1972.
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