Tainan International Foto Festival
The Tainan International Foto Festival (TiFF) will run from mid-November 2018 to April 2019. Like Kaohsiung Photo, it is a government-organized event. TiFF is also looking ahead to the 400th anniversary of the founding of Tainan City in 2024, and an eight-year plan has been proposed.
Chief curator Albert J.L. Huang recalls how he changed his mind after initially declining the Tainan City Cultural Affairs Bureau’s invitation to curate the festival. “Cultural identity” is a core value that he has been concerned about for many years, but Taiwan’s sense of cultural identity has always been embarrassingly unclear. He thought about the example of the United States, a young country with only 200-plus years of history, where visual imagery has been an important tool in forming a national consciousness. He felt that Taiwan perhaps has the opportunity, by eight years of effort, to build its cultural identity through photography. It was these second thoughts that caused him to accept the post of chief curator.
However, although Tainan has always been called the cultural capital of Taiwan, and is also the city through which Western photographic techniques first arrived in the island, it has never had a special status in the history of Taiwanese photography. In order to define Tainan’s place in that history, the organizers first put their hand to planning the “Keynote Photographer” series.
The first to drop anchor in Tainan was Hsu Yuan-fu (1932‡2018), who was noted as early as 1988 by Chang Chao-tang in his book In Search of Photos Past.
During his photographic career of more than 40 years, Hsu Yuan-fu shot in both black-and-white and color, and covered diverse themes ranging from documentary photographs to commercial photography. In the 1960s he submitted works to Japanese magazines, and for a long period he dedicated himself to photography education and extension. Over his lifetime he witnessed the development of photography in Tainan, and was important in transmitting the legacy of the past to the next generation. At the end of April an exhibition entitled “Keynote Photographers: Hsu Yuan-fu” opened at the Soulangh Cultural Park, marking the first step in a discourse about photography in Tainan.
The main theme of TiFF will be “Kun-shen Unveiled” (kunshen, or khun-sin in Taiwanese, is a name for the sandbars that are a feature of Tainan’s coast). The exhibitions that will appear in November all revolve around the keyword “Tainan.” Albert Huang has put the focus on the creative work of a new generation of photographers, and he sought out photographers from Tainan, including Chen Chin-pao, Chuang Kung-ju and Chang Shih-fei. Tainan is the cultural soil that they grew up in, and they look at Tainan from their own angles. For “On Location, Tainan” TiFF invited a number of young creators, including Yang Shun-fa, Huang Chien-lung, Jhang Jing-hong, and Lee Li-chung, who use different forms and points of contact to present the Tainan that is in their hearts and minds, whether in the past, present or future.
“TiFF is a platform, and I hope it is a kind of approbation for photography as a whole,” says Huang. He hopes that through the different themes of the festival’s exhibitions, creative works of different categories, focusing on different issues, can interact and engage in dialogue. Be it journalistic photography, salon photography, or art photography, all will have a place at TiFF and all will receive affirmation.
Step by step, Huang is delineating the contours of an eight-year blueprint. He looks forward to people using photography to affirm their own culture through networking and dialogue. He also wants to go a step further and build a photography ecosystem, because “what we plant will only grow if there is an ecosystem. It won’t be easy, but we are surely going to try,” says Huang.
“Photography is a kind of provocation. When you see a great work, you will be provoked to think about whether your own work is actually good. This is the main meaning of the photography festival in terms of education.” —Ma Li-chun
Using selfies to record history: Face Post, by John Yuyi. (courtesy of Kaohsiung Photo)
Chen Po-i recorded images of Kaohsiung’s Hongmaogang Village, which has now disappeared from the map. (courtesy of Kaohsiung Photo)
“Taiwan perhaps has the opportunity, through eight years of accumulated effort, to experience a photographic cultural identification.” —Albert J.L. Huang
The Tainan International Foto Festival (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)
A view of the venue for the exhibition “Keynote Photographers: Hsu Yuan-fu.” During his life, Hsu was a witness to the development of photography in Tainan, and was important in passing along the legacy of the past to the next generation. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)
In his works, Huang Tzi-chin uses polyester resin to seal up old things, as if storing away everyone’s common memories. (courtesy of TiFF)
Sugar Mill No. 5, by Chang Shih-fei. Tainan-born Chang uses images to record his memories of his hometown. (courtesy of TiFF)
Chuang Kung-ju’s Madou x Home documents changes in Chuang’s hometown over a 20-year period, evoking a sense of time slipping away.