The Absurd and the Surreal: Photographic Works of Deng Nan-guang and Chang Chao-tang as Artistic Self-Constructs of the Taiwanese Subaltern Counterpublic

Abstract

Introduction Deng Nan-guang 鄧南光 (1907–1971) and Chang Chao-tang 張照堂 (b. 1943) are two photographers revered for their immense contributions to the development of photographic practice in Taiwan. Their names and works are regularly cited as cornerstones of modern Taiwanese artistic expression. Deng, the more senior of the two, enjoyed a most productive phase in the years surrounding the end of the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan (1895–1945). His sojourns across the island from around 1935 to 1960 culminated in thousands of photographs reminiscent of Paul Wolff’s 35-mm candids of life in the ailing days of the Weimar Republic. Chang, whose representative period can be roughly bookended by his earliest works around 1960 and the Nationalist 中國國民黨 (also known as the Kuomintang or KMT) government’s lifting of martial law in 1987, likewise drew from humanist traditions of European street photography with a passing acknowledgement of Brassaï and Henri Cartier-Bresson and a heady mix of the earlier, formalist tastes of L aszl o Moholy-Nagy and the absurdity of Man Ray. A discussion of Deng and Chang is one that inevitably intersects with critical examinations of Taiwanese identity politics. Deng’s years as an outsider from the peripheries of the Empire of Japan while residing in Tokyo (1924–1934) and his later return to Taipei (then known as Taihoku-sh u) greatly conformed his practice to that of the colonised perspective. Similarly, the Nanjing-based Republic of China’s (ROC’s) assumption of control over Taiwan in 1945 and its subsequent occupation of the island in late 1949 as a state-in-exile was to become a recurring backdrop to Chang’s own creative viewpoint. Here, the works of both photographers can be arguably recognised as instruments of subaltern counterpublic discourse.