Art lovers in Taipei have long been spoilt for choice when it comes to exhibition spaces. And that seems set to continue, with the addition of a new national center dedicated to photography.
It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here. The National Center of Photography and Images opened its doors to visitors in Taipei for the first time on Thursday. Deputy Culture Minister Hsiao Tsung-huang says it’s just the beginning. He says the original plans for a National Photography Museum are temporarily on hold. But he hopes that this center will be only the first of many branches around the country, eventually culminating in a dedicated national museum.
The center is opening with three exhibitions, including “Hold the Mirror up to His Gaze”, an exhibition exploring Taiwanese photography before the Second World War. A number of old photo collections are on display, including “Memories of Taiwan and the Penghu Archipelago” from the period following the Sino-Japanese war. Works by pioneering Chinese photojournalist Lang Jingshan also appear, as do the oldest photographs of the exhibition: portraits of indigenous Taiwanese people made by American photographer St. Julian Hugh Edwards.
Curator Hongjohn Lin says he selected around 600 pictures from an archive of more than 10,000. Then he commissioned nine artists to carry out research.
National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts Director Liang Yung-fei says he hopes the work done by pioneering early photographers can inspire a new generation.
The second exhibition is entitled “A Handful of Dust” and displays works by a number of well-known Western photographers. The final exhibition is “Trans-Communication”. It tracks the history of the exhibition space from its start as the office of the Osaka Mercantile Company in the Japanese colonial period up to the present day.