Throughout his career as a photographer that has lasted almost three decades, Chou's subject matter has shifted from captivating journalistic events to creatively theatrical scenes, and his style has changed from documentary photography to fabricated photography. In his latest project, Animal Farm, Chou changed the role of photographer as a “hunter” and turned himself into a “director,” and amazed his audience with a bizarre and unsettling sense of existence in his characteristic way.
Photography as a Mode of Clutching and Suckling (A Glimpse into Our Hearts -The Leper)
Chou Ching-hui, bewildered by the uncanny sights and scenes of the world, has planted s seed in his heart, the wonderful budding of which we are only just beginning to witness.
Art Critic Huang Han-ti
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) discovered that children a little over one year old often obtain cognition of the surrounding environment through clutching or suckling. To some extent, the photographer, in the same way, uses the camera to perceive, feel, discover, explore, and learn about the world, building his inner world as he experiences the varied ups and downs of the human condition.
When we say a photographer is trying to embrace a phenomenon or extract something from an event, what kind of image comes to mind? A baby reaching for its mother’s breast? A bee gathering honey? Or does he suck like a vampire? Is what is extracted merely an infinitesimal piece of the world? This stirs us deeply from the bottom of out hearts, and this is where discussions on narrative photography and photojournalism originate. Is there any other form of photography that uses other methods apart from clutching and suckling? If so, it must belong to a realm outside and removed from the elements of verisimilitude and reportage. In a broad sense, from the nature of mutual nourishing and endless rotation, it may be said that there is no other mode of photography.
If what author Graham Green said in his novel A Burntout Case is true, that “In your creation is yourself,” then we may venture to say that Chou Ching-Hui’s escape from laborious photo journalism (which saw him photographing fights in the Legislative Yuan and street protests) to the photographic documentation of Happy Life Leprosy Hospital patients is his way of recovering his sensitivity to pain from a state of apathy (the ancient Chinese called leprosy “the disease of apathy,” meaning the disease of numbness). That modern photography pursues and captures various abnormal and perverted subjects is connected to two factors. On the one hand, it has to do with the pursuit of originality in the present age; on the other hand, it is actually a reflection of the depth of the modern psyche. This phenomenon reflects not only the creator’s mind, but also the mind of the entire human race in this era. The reason for the immense attraction of Ho Tsong-Hui’s Asylum and parts of Chou Ching-Hui’s Leper, aside from their departure from the “large-scale imitation of western photography,” is precisely this dynamic force of the psyche of the age. In this restless and deteriorating generation, the ease and warmth that Teng Nan-kuang displays and the verve of Chang Tsai seem so far away.
Judging from the “Leper” pictures that Chou Ching-hui has so far taken, this collection may well be built into a powerful photo essay. However, great themes always take time to develop, grow and mature, which is why the photographer is unable to picture the overall context of the collected images; thus, what is presented to the viewers is not yet as fine and touching as it can be. Nevertheless, the number of excellent pictures in the “Leper” collection is twice that of the pictures he last presented in the Taiwan Photography Quarterly, and this fart alone promises a mature “Leper” collection for the future. After all, Chou’s photographic documentation of the “Leper” is ongoing, and we should keep in mind the truth that “the essence of structure is the process of its construction” - whether the artist insists on his right to edit the collection, or entrusts it to a reliable party. In my personal view, before this collection finds a better linear order (as Bill Brandt recorded a day in the lives of three people from different social classes in London in the Thirties; or the profound, penetrating clues contained in Flor Garduno’s Witnesses of Time) I think the approach to compilation that Kent Klich employed for his reportage of drug abuse, The Boob of Beth, would on doubt be the most reliable and appropriate.
Among the photographs in Chou Ching-hui’s “Leper” collection, the one that best suggests the commune- like nature and closed state of the asylum is probably the one in which three individuals (two inside the room and one outside, none of their faces visible to the viewers) ate installing a window in a window frame; next is the photograph in which some gloves and rubber boors are casually hung on a bamboo stick in a courtyard corner, exposed to the sunlight: those gloves and rubber boots remind one of the lepers’ crumbling and incomplete bodies, or the hands and feet protruding from some kind of isolated state - a dark, bleak state of existence. Just like those of us who are fortunate enough to possess a perfectly complete body, these streams of life, before they flowed to their present condition, also had a glorious past (as we may see in the still life picture of a small pile of tangerines and a handsome portrait of a certain youth), a hopeful future (the marriage of the lepers’ second generation, viewed by the able-bodied people as a blessing, and the longing look in the innocent child’s eyes), and certainly the aging, sickness and death that is lying in wait on the ordinary person’s path (the picture of the deceased lying in the coffin placed at the corner of the lotus curtain which leads to paradise, and the close-up of the face of a deceased person who, concerned about appearances, wore artificial eyes; both pictures are the acme of graphical death) .
The village in which these people are assembled is invested with worldly light and love, but due to the particular circumstances in which the people exist, this light and love is tinged with an otherworldly quality. The look and posture of the child, wearing a tall bat, waiting to perform in the Christmas party, is no less powerful than the person who, standing beneath the eaves, looks as though nailed by the strong light on his forehead. In comparison, the still life picture composed of the Holy Bible and the fresco of the Nativity represents a kind of heaven-sent rain. That Chou Ching-hui observes sacredness in many a still life picture deserves our attention. Perhaps this is also a necessary relief from the immense pressure of life and work. Even in the elderly individuals who stoop before large tree trunks, laboring against the light and in the blind man listening to the radio with the concentration of a predatory hawk, we see a colossal unity and simplicity, a solemnity and concentration that is the manifestation of an unadulterated desire to live - the elimination and overcoming of disability. The lepers have their own special jokes, such as trying on one another’s “feet - such an unimaginable subject for those of us with healthy limbs. They too, with the remnants of their hands, play the lottery like many others do around the island. Yet how can this “abnormal” daily life be visualized (as opposed to verbalized) in an expression that is intelligible and still allows room for reflection? This reminds me of the medical works of an esoteric Buddhist doctrine, in which the close relations between human disease pathology and the five senses is discussed. Interestingly, the two pictures on the wall comparing the hands of a leper before and after an operation seem to be a revelation of some kind to us.
The drama of life, when represented by the pure form of mathematical symbols, actually contains surprisingly little variation; the wonder lies in each individual who, trapped within the net, performs at the cost of his own life, thus shaping various trees of life, each with its different foliage and form. This is why Herzog’s observation that even midgets grow up from children is so thought provoking. Chou Ching-hui once described the villagers (who, due to their physical disabilities, do nor move around often) as “animate objects” - only elements of life circulate through the village; to photograph them, one must chat with them in the places where they are often stationed, yet it is during the brief process of moving from one station to another that the most piercing life drama takes place. Whenever a situation like this occurs, he blames himself for “not having photographed the play these people suffer to act our with their lives”; yet when he does capture it on film, he says, “I am both excited and guilt-stricken, questioning myself for using other people’s suffering when I exhibit such works.” Obviously, this inner struggle falls into the category of photographic ethics. Chou Ching-hui candidly admitted that during the process of the three years of photographic documentation of the village, he never thought of doing anything for those people; he merely felt that it was a place that would vanish and it was necessary to record it. Chou considers that “all men are equal and you don’t have to aid them or save them, and the urge to do so is based on putting oneself higher than others.” He chose to become friends with them, leaving the possibility open of perhaps even going into business with them some day, and to follow up with his documentation (perhaps the entire village could be demolished).
Actually, in retrospect, it may be said that, driven by the stifling working and creative environment, Chou Ching-hui desperately coiled together, like snakes mating, his life meaning with the life drama of these people. Chou Ching-hui does not share the revulsion of others towards the sight and smell of the lepers; on the contrary, it is his “curiosity about these people’s lives” or the immense power that originates from the restlessness he feels about himself, his work and the society in which he exists, that allow him to metamorphose these people, in his visual imagination, into “creatures other than human” (such as turtles or amoeba) from which he obtains a private joy. The conventional reporter is forbidden by the codes of “humanity” from thinking or making known such thoughts, but it is also a part of human nature that “fun,” like wine, can be an auxiliary remedy. It is precisely this momentary fantasy of “fun” that allows him, in a stare of empathy, to escape from the tiring tools of his livelihood, from the heavy material he is compelled to record, into another world as the shutter snaps - the world of artistic creativity that is so often over-simplified and classified, opposed to “reportage.” It is this primal power that invests Chou Ching-hui’s “The Leper” with a style distinctly different from other photojournalism in Taiwan.
Tracing along these lines, it would be easy to find a consistency in the several seemingly unrelated new subjects Chou Ching-hui is currently working on. If Chou Ching-hui is able to continue his creative work and become a significant photographer, the entire process of photographing and compiling “The Leper” collection will have become an important reference for understanding his works. Of course, another reference point prior to this one is his undertaking, when in the army, to record the entire process of an operation conducted by a medic. He then used these shots to make slides for teaching materials, and to record the peculiarities of life that he saw and perceived in that environment (such as the widowing of women by a plane crash; and, when the mother of a general died, the miraculous overnight repair and installation of an air conditioning system in an old church in preparation for the funeral, at which former premier Hau Bei-tsun paid his condolences). Serving in the military and working in society are the two most important coming of age rituals in Taiwan, and Chou Ching-hui, bewildered by the uncanny sights and scenes of the world, has planted s seed in his heart, the wonderful budding of which we are only just beginning to witness.
(This article originally appeared in Modern Taiwanese Photographers, published in 1995.)
Photography as a Mode of Clutching and Suckling (A Glimpse into Our Hearts -The Leper)
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) discovered that children a little over one year old often obtain cognition of the surrounding environment through clutching or suckling. To some extent, the photographer, in the same way, uses the camera to perceive, feel, discover, explore, and learn about the world, building his inner world as he experiences the varied ups and downs of the human condition.
When we say a photographer is trying to embrace a phenomenon or extract something from an event, what kind of image comes to mind? A baby reaching for its mother’s breast? A bee gathering honey? Or does he suck like a vampire? Is what is extracted merely an infinitesimal piece of the world? This stirs us deeply from the bottom of out hearts, and this is where discussions on narrative photography and photojournalism originate. Is there any other form of photography that uses other methods apart from clutching and suckling? If so, it must belong to a realm outside and removed from the elements of verisimilitude and reportage. In a broad sense, from the nature of mutual nourishing and endless rotation, it may be said that there is no other mode of photography.
If what author Graham Green said in his novel A Burntout Case is true, that “In your creation is yourself,” then we may venture to say that Chou Ching-Hui’s escape from laborious photo journalism (which saw him photographing fights in the Legislative Yuan and street protests) to the photographic documentation of Happy Life Leprosy Hospital patients is his way of recovering his sensitivity to pain from a state of apathy (the ancient Chinese called leprosy “the disease of apathy,” meaning the disease of numbness). That modern photography pursues and captures various abnormal and perverted subjects is connected to two factors. On the one hand, it has to do with the pursuit of originality in the present age; on the other hand, it is actually a reflection of the depth of the modern psyche. This phenomenon reflects not only the creator’s mind, but also the mind of the entire human race in this era. The reason for the immense attraction of Ho Tsong-Hui’s Asylum and parts of Chou Ching-Hui’s Leper, aside from their departure from the “large-scale imitation of western photography,” is precisely this dynamic force of the psyche of the age. In this restless and deteriorating generation, the ease and warmth that Teng Nan-kuang displays and the verve of Chang Tsai seem so far away.
Judging from the “Leper” pictures that Chou Ching-hui has so far taken, this collection may well be built into a powerful photo essay. However, great themes always take time to develop, grow and mature, which is why the photographer is unable to picture the overall context of the collected images; thus, what is presented to the viewers is not yet as fine and touching as it can be. Nevertheless, the number of excellent pictures in the “Leper” collection is twice that of the pictures he last presented in the Taiwan Photography Quarterly, and this fart alone promises a mature “Leper” collection for the future. After all, Chou’s photographic documentation of the “Leper” is ongoing, and we should keep in mind the truth that “the essence of structure is the process of its construction” - whether the artist insists on his right to edit the collection, or entrusts it to a reliable party. In my personal view, before this collection finds a better linear order (as Bill Brandt recorded a day in the lives of three people from different social classes in London in the Thirties; or the profound, penetrating clues contained in Flor Garduno’s Witnesses of Time) I think the approach to compilation that Kent Klich employed for his reportage of drug abuse, The Boob of Beth, would on doubt be the most reliable and appropriate.
Among the photographs in Chou Ching-hui’s “Leper” collection, the one that best suggests the commune- like nature and closed state of the asylum is probably the one in which three individuals (two inside the room and one outside, none of their faces visible to the viewers) ate installing a window in a window frame; next is the photograph in which some gloves and rubber boors are casually hung on a bamboo stick in a courtyard corner, exposed to the sunlight: those gloves and rubber boots remind one of the lepers’ crumbling and incomplete bodies, or the hands and feet protruding from some kind of isolated state - a dark, bleak state of existence. Just like those of us who are fortunate enough to possess a perfectly complete body, these streams of life, before they flowed to their present condition, also had a glorious past (as we may see in the still life picture of a small pile of tangerines and a handsome portrait of a certain youth), a hopeful future (the marriage of the lepers’ second generation, viewed by the able-bodied people as a blessing, and the longing look in the innocent child’s eyes), and certainly the aging, sickness and death that is lying in wait on the ordinary person’s path (the picture of the deceased lying in the coffin placed at the corner of the lotus curtain which leads to paradise, and the close-up of the face of a deceased person who, concerned about appearances, wore artificial eyes; both pictures are the acme of graphical death) .
The village in which these people are assembled is invested with worldly light and love, but due to the particular circumstances in which the people exist, this light and love is tinged with an otherworldly quality. The look and posture of the child, wearing a tall bat, waiting to perform in the Christmas party, is no less powerful than the person who, standing beneath the eaves, looks as though nailed by the strong light on his forehead. In comparison, the still life picture composed of the Holy Bible and the fresco of the Nativity represents a kind of heaven-sent rain. That Chou Ching-hui observes sacredness in many a still life picture deserves our attention. Perhaps this is also a necessary relief from the immense pressure of life and work. Even in the elderly individuals who stoop before large tree trunks, laboring against the light and in the blind man listening to the radio with the concentration of a predatory hawk, we see a colossal unity and simplicity, a solemnity and concentration that is the manifestation of an unadulterated desire to live - the elimination and overcoming of disability. The lepers have their own special jokes, such as trying on one another’s “feet - such an unimaginable subject for those of us with healthy limbs. They too, with the remnants of their hands, play the lottery like many others do around the island. Yet how can this “abnormal” daily life be visualized (as opposed to verbalized) in an expression that is intelligible and still allows room for reflection? This reminds me of the medical works of an esoteric Buddhist doctrine, in which the close relations between human disease pathology and the five senses is discussed. Interestingly, the two pictures on the wall comparing the hands of a leper before and after an operation seem to be a revelation of some kind to us.
The drama of life, when represented by the pure form of mathematical symbols, actually contains surprisingly little variation; the wonder lies in each individual who, trapped within the net, performs at the cost of his own life, thus shaping various trees of life, each with its different foliage and form. This is why Herzog’s observation that even midgets grow up from children is so thought provoking. Chou Ching-hui once described the villagers (who, due to their physical disabilities, do nor move around often) as “animate objects” - only elements of life circulate through the village; to photograph them, one must chat with them in the places where they are often stationed, yet it is during the brief process of moving from one station to another that the most piercing life drama takes place. Whenever a situation like this occurs, he blames himself for “not having photographed the play these people suffer to act our with their lives”; yet when he does capture it on film, he says, “I am both excited and guilt-stricken, questioning myself for using other people’s suffering when I exhibit such works.” Obviously, this inner struggle falls into the category of photographic ethics. Chou Ching-hui candidly admitted that during the process of the three years of photographic documentation of the village, he never thought of doing anything for those people; he merely felt that it was a place that would vanish and it was necessary to record it. Chou considers that “all men are equal and you don’t have to aid them or save them, and the urge to do so is based on putting oneself higher than others.” He chose to become friends with them, leaving the possibility open of perhaps even going into business with them some day, and to follow up with his documentation (perhaps the entire village could be demolished).
Actually, in retrospect, it may be said that, driven by the stifling working and creative environment, Chou Ching-hui desperately coiled together, like snakes mating, his life meaning with the life drama of these people. Chou Ching-hui does not share the revulsion of others towards the sight and smell of the lepers; on the contrary, it is his “curiosity about these people’s lives” or the immense power that originates from the restlessness he feels about himself, his work and the society in which he exists, that allow him to metamorphose these people, in his visual imagination, into “creatures other than human” (such as turtles or amoeba) from which he obtains a private joy. The conventional reporter is forbidden by the codes of “humanity” from thinking or making known such thoughts, but it is also a part of human nature that “fun,” like wine, can be an auxiliary remedy. It is precisely this momentary fantasy of “fun” that allows him, in a stare of empathy, to escape from the tiring tools of his livelihood, from the heavy material he is compelled to record, into another world as the shutter snaps - the world of artistic creativity that is so often over-simplified and classified, opposed to “reportage.” It is this primal power that invests Chou Ching-hui’s “The Leper” with a style distinctly different from other photojournalism in Taiwan.
Tracing along these lines, it would be easy to find a consistency in the several seemingly unrelated new subjects Chou Ching-hui is currently working on. If Chou Ching-hui is able to continue his creative work and become a significant photographer, the entire process of photographing and compiling “The Leper” collection will have become an important reference for understanding his works. Of course, another reference point prior to this one is his undertaking, when in the army, to record the entire process of an operation conducted by a medic. He then used these shots to make slides for teaching materials, and to record the peculiarities of life that he saw and perceived in that environment (such as the widowing of women by a plane crash; and, when the mother of a general died, the miraculous overnight repair and installation of an air conditioning system in an old church in preparation for the funeral, at which former premier Hau Bei-tsun paid his condolences). Serving in the military and working in society are the two most important coming of age rituals in Taiwan, and Chou Ching-hui, bewildered by the uncanny sights and scenes of the world, has planted s seed in his heart, the wonderful budding of which we are only just beginning to witness.
(This article originally appeared in Modern Taiwanese Photographers, published in 1995.)