REBIRTH OF CREATIVITY
INTERVIEW WITH ART PHOTOGRAPHER CHI KUO-CHANG
創作生命的再生-留法影像藝術家紀國章教授專訪
UNESCO/ International P.E.N.--Taipei Chinese Center2005 Report :
Photography artist Chi Kuo-chang discovered early his calling to observe the world through a camera’s viewfinder. He quit his studies at 20, and held his first personal exhibition at 20. After completing his military service, he saved enough money by Newspaper to study photography of Art in Paris, and went from student to assistant lecturer to Professor in six years. He has collected countless awards over his career spanning more than twenty years, and his works are in the collections of major European art institutions. Like his teacher Long Chin-San, he has an award from UNESCO recognizing his contributions to art. Yet in Taiwan, it was a lonely, difficult journey to move from behind the viewfinder into the limelight of public attention as a “Contemporary Visual Artist.” Since 1997 there have been loud cries in Taiwan for a rediscovery of its roots, but the public continued to neglect its artistic culture. Chi Kuo-chang found himself in the desert beset by doubts about the future. Why create art? Who would appreciate it? And what will happen now that digital photography was spreading like wildfire?
Chi Kuo-chang’s art follows two tracks. The first is the “Documentary and Culture” style with mass appeal, while the other track focuses on abstract imagery, seeking the essence of photography and challenging established frameworks. The documentary and culture style includes the “Wild Birds of Taiwan” collection in 1984 when he was twenty years old. This won gold medals in the colored photos category at international photography exhibitions in countries such as the USA, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Other documentary works include”Huang Hai-Tai, the Centagenerian Showman,” and ”Faces: Nepal” (1998). Noted works in the abstract track include the “Symbols of Colors” in 1994, “The Dying Flower” which was invited to attend Les Rencontres Internationale de la Photographie d’Arles in 1997, and the soon to be shown “Variegated Shadow” series in 2003. Together the three abstract visual collections are referred to as the “Trilogy of Color.”
Be it documentary or abstract, Chi Kuo-chang’s career as an artist began in the “Pre-Digital Age” and is heir to the grand tradition of the visual arts. To him, a photographer is a painter like Van Gogh and Gauguin, the only difference being the use of the camera. Though the medium of expression may be different, the emphasis is still on the overall composition and the technical skills used to express the artist’s vision.
As a member of the international community of photographers, Chi Kuo-chang soon found his niche in the history of Western visual art. His continued efforts to surpass himself have led to works of increasingly greater depths and technical difficulty. This is an incentive common to artists across the world and how they recognize each other’s artistic essences.
If we go back to the prestigious Arles international photography festival in 1997, out of nearly sixty exhibitions there what would “Chi Kuo-chang” have represented? It was the one image from “The Dying Flower” collection. At first sight, it appears to be a tracery of lines drawn in ink using the “Slim Gold” calligraphy style. Only upon closer inspection do we realize these are the veins of a withering lotus blossom. This expressed the “imagery gene” fundamental to visual perception in a simple yet delicate and elegant manner. Chi Kuo-chang’s overseas artist friends may not know Taiwan from Burkina Faso, but they could certainly tell that Chi Kuo-chang has once again set a new standard in the art of photography since the “Symbols of Colors”. To the international photographic art community, “The Dying Flower” is now a potent emblem synonymous with Chi Kuo-chang.
Since his sojourn in France in 1990, Chi Kuo-chang has worked hard to establish himself in the international photographic art community. By familiarizing himself with the works of past masters and experimenting with the meaning behind each method of expression, he was able to ease himself in the flow of the international photography, culminating in 1997 with the invitation to Arles, France’s capital of photography. Chi Kuo-chang was the second Taiwanese to be so invited since Lang Ching-Shan in 1981.
Chi Kuo-chang’s goal is to discover art in neglected corners. For example, the internationally recognized “The Dying Flower” series was the result of four years spent in the botanical garden on Nanhai Road in Taipei. The withered lotus and its shadows were first caught on camera, and then processed using high-contrast techniques in the darkroom. The result was an international sensation, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris alone held ten works from this series in its collection. Yet while he was creating those photos, the elders relaxing in the botanical gardens would often ask him: “Young man, what is so interesting about that pile of rubbish?”
To Chi Kuo-chang, transforming the ordinary into the fantastic is what being an artist is all about. Through the window opened by the artist, even a pile of rubbish may become a piece of art. “In Japan, the maple leaves of Hokkaido are beautiful enough by themselves to make any snapshot look good as well. Why would you need an artist for that?” This is why he prefers to discover beauty in places yet unseen, and avoids the easily available “picture postcard” scenery. In the soon to be displayed “Impression:Vitrine” collection, there is an image of geometrical metal architecture that he captured in the Paris Metro subway. Though countless passengers pass by it every day, Chi Kuo-chang remarks that few would ever see it the way he framed it.
Though he had established his reputation and visual style internationally, Chi Kuo-chang’s life as a creative artist experienced a great crisis. He was forced to come face to face with the fact that Taiwan’s society could not give him the same recognition that France could. When his teacher, the internationally renowned Lang Chin-Shan passed away in 1995, neither the government nor the cultural establishment paid much attention. How could Chi Kuo-chang continue in his chosen art if this was what happens to its greatest masters?
If we go back to Chi Kuo-chang’s formative years, we can see that society and the educational system had not been kind to him. When he was in first grade, a traumatic car accident left him unable to speak for nearly half a year, so that he missed out on learning the phonetic alphabet properly. In junior high, his teacher considered him “a slow learner,” while his vocational high school teacher wrote that “Chi has autistic tendencies.” Knowing that he was not a good speaker, Chi Kuo-chang chose to express himself through photography instead. He achieved good results, and was promoted from Da-An Vocational High School into the National Taiwan University of Arts. In the following two years, he changed majors four times and eventually dropped out altogether on grounds that in that college he couldn’t get what he wanted. By then he had discovered “Paris” and had decided that this was where he wanted to study.
A year after he dropped out of college, Chi Kuo-chang held his first personal exhibition with wild birds and nature as its theme. The master photographer Lang Ching-Shan was invited to attend, and impressed he took Chi Kuo-chang on as his student. When Chi Kuo-chang was conscripted for military service, the Ministry of Defence assigned him to the Chinese Television System (CTS) as a cameraman. When he finished his military service, he joined the United Evening News, thinking that it was a good place to learn and save money. In reality, he had to chase news in the morning, camp out at sports events in the afternoon, and frequently had to run to the National Theater and Concert Hall for arts and culture news photos. Even his evenings were not free, as there was a duty roster for emergency accident scenes. Chi Kuo-chang recalls that he gained eight kilograms during his military service, but this was gone after three months with the newspaper. This kind of life went on for two years, during which he saved some money and also received the National Culture Medal for Best Photojournalism.
1990 saw Chi Kuo-chang head to France to study at the Ecole Superieure d’Etudes Cinematographiques. Starting from language school, he ultimately received a Master of Visual Arts diploma from the Unversite National de Paris VIII, and then went on to become a lecturer at the Ecole Nationale d'Art. His outstanding performance allowed him to bypass Taiwanese society and leap into the international community of photography, but as he neared forty, he was once again forced to come to terms with a society that did not respect the creative arts.
Chi Kuo-chang cannot help but compare the French government’s longstanding respect for the Arts dating back to the 19th Century, whose policies and institutions have attracted the world’s most important artists to Paris. Even today, more than two centuries later, its pre-eminence as the art capital of the world remains unchallenged.
In addition, the French Ministry of Culture has pushed for the city of Arles in Provence to become the world capital of art photography. Chi Kuo-chang says that Arles is to photography what Cannes is to the movies. Both are small cities with a population of less than a hundred thousand, but every year creative artists and art lovers make their pilgrimage there.
Arles is a small city where Impressionist painters such as Van Gogh and Gauguin once lived. Ever since 1970, the French Ministry of Culture has held an annual international photography festival here in July, and an international film festival at Cannes in August. A few years after the festivals started, the city of Arles even set up the Ecole Nationale de la Photographie, becoming the world’s best place to study photography and work creatively. According to Chi Kuo-chang, there are around thirty-five to forty official exhibitions during Les Recontres Internationale de la Photographie d’Arles (Les R.I.P d’Arles), but there are also many unofficial showings in private homes, churches or coffee shops. A tourist can easily view at least sixty photography exhibitions in a tour around Arles.
When Chi Kuo-chang was invited to Les R.I.P D’Arles in 1997, his works were placed on display at the Espace Van Gogh. Originally the sanatorium where Van Gogh was committed, the French Ministry of Culture converted the building into a first class exhibition center. Converting old public buildings into new art spaces is one of the French culture establishment’s most important innovations. The Musee D’Orsay for example used to be an abandoned train station. Chi Kuo-chang notes that although Taiwan has emulated France in converting disused public buildings into display and performance spaces, it has yet to grasp French ideal of creating a rich, artistic environment and their nurturing of artists.
After returning to Taiwan in 1994, Chi Kuo-chang found Taiwan to be a very stressful environment. He found France to be just the opposite, something he attributes to its society’s acceptance of and respect for artists. He is direct about expressing his disappointment in Taiwan’s cultural establishment. When his teacher Long Chin-San passed away in 1995, he was shocked by the Taiwanese government’s apathy in the passing of this internationally renowned master of photography. In 1997, while he worked with the grand master puppeteer Huang Hai-Tai as his subject, the time he spent with this living national treasure only made him even more dismayed at the ignorance and incompetence of the bureaucrats in charge of Taiwan’s cultural establishment.
Chi Kuo-chang points out that France’s Bureau of Cultural Heritage had established a Department of Photographic Culture Preservation. Whenever an important artist passes away, an expert commission of three to five specialists is set up to spend two years cataloguing and preserving the works of that artist. The third year is spent on public awareness campaigns and exhibitions, with portfolios and biographies published in order to demonstrate French pride at their invention of "Photography." The art that the artist spent his life creating are thus preserved and promoted in a systematic manner.
When Long Chin-San passed away, Chi Kuo-chang had also set up a project to collect and preserve his works. The French Ministry of Culture had expressed sincere interest, but Chen Yu-Hsiu, the then chairman of Taiwan’s Council for Cultural Affairs, was reported by the media to be more interested in retaining this national treasure’s works in Taiwan. Yet after three long years, neither Chi Kuo-chang nor Master Long’s family heard anything further from Chairman Chen. Commemorative exhibitions had already been held several times, but the government had not even bothered to make preliminary inquiries. The society at large is also unkind towards art photographers, because while nearly everyone in Taiwan has gone to the cinemas to see a movie, few bother visiting the galleries to see photography exhibitions. Since you can use the negatives to reproduce as many photographs as you like, most people also believe that photographic art would not maintain their value in the way that paintings would. Chi Kuo-chang points out that technically speaking, etchings can also be mass produced, but they are still often seen in important art auctions. Besides, auction houses in the USA and Europe have already begun taking on photographic art works.
According to Chi Kuo-chang, UNESCO had studied the situation with art photographers, and had suggested an “understanding” whereby the best photographers would agree to make only fifty copies of their works and to number them. The author keeps #1, while the other forty-nine are left to circulate on the market. This leaves room for future appreciation in value, so that the author’s future is assured and private collectors are more motivated to collect these works. All contemporary photographers follow this understanding, and in comparison to a similar understanding for etchings which allows 100 reproductions, there are far fewer photographic art works in circulation.
In Taiwan, the value, quantity and quality of photographic art works are all still lacking. The lack of preservation and promotion of works left behind by top artists, the lack of specialists skilled in preserving cultural heritage, and the ignorance of government bureaucrats are all cold hard facts that could not be avoided. Despite Chi Kuo-chang’s international fame as an artist, he could not avoid the issue any longer after 1997. There simply did not seem to be any reason to hold exhibitions in Taiwan any more, because there did not appear to be any demand. What would be the point of a personal exhibition? Patting himself on the back? Inspecting his own work to see if he has improved? Haunted by these questions and feeling the pressure of working in the media again, Chi Kuo-chang’s sank into a five year long depression and abandoned his art.
Around this point in time, digital image technology was also developing at a rapid pace. Chi Kuo-chang belonged to the “Pre-Digital Age”, and had spent his life developing his own individual style and techniques. The digital revolution threatened to make his unique artistic identity obsolete overnight. Chi Kuo-chang considers himself to have fallen through a gap between the generations. The older masters had already established their position in history and could ignore new developments, while the new generation grew up side by side with the new technology. But for those like him caught in between, they had to confront new and unfamiliar technologies or become obsolete themselves.
Chi Kuo-chang remarks that some people consider digitally edited images to be creative art. To him, such creations would replace composition and theme, and there would no longer be any need for the artist to seek out new subject matter or look for new undiscovered perspectives. If this was the case, then any one who can use photo-editing software can call themselves artists, and the art of photography would become merely a random recombination of imagery. This meant that the path he had followed would be completely obsolete – no need to wait for the lotus flowers to wither, no need to calculate the visual impact of each ripple, and certainly no need to spend days experimenting in the dark room to get the exact desired effect. Chi Kuo-chang discovered that digital technology would soon blur the distinction between “Master” and “craftsman”. He was not the only one to be concerned, for other photographers in France expressed the same fears as well. They did not want to be swept helplessly along by digital technology. There was no knowing whether their artistic freedom and individuality could be retained. Some decided to draw the distinction by declaring themselves followers of the “ “Pure Visual Art Spirit”, while others rejected digital technology altogether. Chi Kuo-chang himself feels that the stress brought on by digital technology contributed to his depression.
In his opinion, an artist’s role is to convert ideas into reality. A piece of art begins as a thought in the creator’s mind, and as it is transformed into something concrete, the creator must keep asking himself: “What am I doing? What am I trying to express?” Although technical skills are important, it is the concept that should be in charge. He doubted his ability to harness digital technology. On top of that, the time spent on learning how to use the computer would be time not spent on creating traditional photographic art. If no results were forthcoming, then he would have wasted his time.
Finally, in June 2003 Chi Kuo-chang decided to bet his future on the computer. Although the fear was still there, he had come to terms with the possibility of failure. “To remain ignorant only makes the fear grow worse, and makes me even more likely to become obsolete”. In the past six months, he has dedicated himself to studying as he creates and creating as he studies. At the same time, he kept reminding himself to use art to master technology and not to fall prey to the lure of technology. Ultimately, he came to an understanding with digital technology. To him, it is now simply a new “digital darkroom” to express himself with.
Chi Kuo-chang turns forty this year. After five years of silence, he is finally about to hold a new personal exhibition, and this will be the finale to the “Trilogy of Color”. The new “Impression:Vitrine” forms a strong contrast with “The Dying Flower” with its shattered and twisted plays of light and darkness, all saturated with color. With this he demonstrates once more how beauty exists everywhere even in forgotten corners. Chi Kuo-chang is not afraid to admit that his conversion to Christianity helped him emerge from his depression, but the new exhibition is still a part of the “Trilogy of Color” theme he began exploring ten years ago. Despite the risk of failing artistically, Chi Kuo-chang still chooses to go ahead and present his efforts. Whether he has succeeded or failed remains to be seen – it will all depend on the public’s reaction.
Viewing “Trilogy of Colors－Chi Kuo-Chang Photo Image Art Exhibition” is to look into a life dedicated to art. Chi Kuo-chang was born and raised on this land, and he also created on this land with international and historical perspectives, as well as a supreme sensitivity to art. His work calls to us and also issues a challenge to the picture frame inside all of us, helping us to return to the most basic, ordinary and also peaceful aspects of life.
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