Collection Online
Search the Collection 搜索M+藏品
M+, Hong Kong, © Chang Chao-Tang
Chang Chao-Tang 張照堂
Panchiao, Taiwan 1963 板橋 1963
1963
Chang Chao-Tang is among the most celebrated and pioneering Taiwanese artists of the last century. His surrealist photographic sensibilities, cultivated since the early 1960s, had a strong influence on the look of media and visual culture in Taiwan. In addition to developing an avant-garde photography practice, Chang was a photojournalist, a cinematographer, and a filmmaker. From 1968 onward, he worked for the state-owned China Television Company and produced several documentaries exploring Taiwanese identity amidst the nativist movement of the 1970s and 1980s. He was also involved in Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s.
Panchiao, Taiwan 1963 is from a series of experimental photographs produced between 1962 and 1965 that made Chang a breakout success. Chang examined photography as an artistic medium and explored freedom of expression through staged, absurdist actions in nondescript locations, capturing the ennui and frustration of his generation in Taiwan under martial law. Titled with place names and dates, each image has a diaristic quality and evokes a sense of locality. Chang was born and raised in Panchiao, a city on the outskirts of Taipei that went through rapid industrialisation and urbanisation in the 1960s. In this composition, two bodies are superimposed and seen from above. The figure in the foreground is blurred, clothed in black and with hands in pockets. The nude man, with only outstretched hands and legs visible, lies on a dirty cloth on the grass. The figure standing over the prostrate body seems indifferent to the scene of pain and confusion happening behind him.
Loading