Dance photography
Ko, who last year won the National Award for Arts, has been called Taiwan's leading modern photographer. It has been said that his work perfectly blends the poetic with the painterly. His life too has been anything but ordinary: He was born into wealth in Tainan in 1929, when Taiwan was under Japanese rule; saw his family fall on hard times, experienced the ravages of war, and even deserted from the military. His first opportunity to study photography formally in Japan didn't come until he was 30.
As a child, Ko traveled Taiwan with his wet nurse, who was then the leader of Tainan's largest Taiwanese Opera company. The experience exposed him to the rich and varied life of performers and sparked his interest in the performing arts. Ko left the military and picked up a camera at the age of 27. The richest of his early work shows the members of a theatrical troupe both on and off the stage experiencing life's joys and tragedies, and garnered the attention of Japan's photographic community.
He worked as a photographer for many years, but never forgot his love of the performing arts. While in Japan, he attended a performance by a famous Russian ballet company. Impressed by the aesthetic sense of the dancers, he became interested in photographing dance.
When he returned to Taiwan, he was presented with a fantastic opportunity: the chance to photograph the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. This important American company had incorporated elements of modern dance, classical ballet and jazz into African-American dance, and introduced African-American dancers to the modern dance community. Alvin Ailey was thrilled with Ko's images and invited him to exhibit them in the US, giving Ko the opportunity to photograph other international dance troupes and artists.
In those days, photographers working with dance troupes generally shot only publicity photos, but Ko went beyond far beyond their lifeless, mechanical approach. He was especially fond of photographing modern dance troupes, and always did his shoots out in the countryside, where he sought to make the abstract vision of modern dance more concrete. For example, when shooting Huang Chung-liang's dance work "Kite" in Tanshui in 1967, he used an optical illusion to make it look as if the dancers--Huang and his wife--in the foreground and background were flying, an effect no choreographer could pull off with such seeming realism on a stage.
Ko introduced Taiwan to a new style of dance photography, which led to collaboration with many artists. Huang Chung-liang, who was already well known in the US, was particularly enthralled by Ko's approach and recommended him to US contacts.
Fan believes that art goes on forever. In spite of a nagging injury, she is still striving to pass on the torch of Dunhuang dance, and Ko is her strongest supporter.