All posts tagged: Series

Textures of Taiwan: Taipei

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Textures in a city are intersectional, they are physical, visual, and emotional aspects that interact with each other and create a certain mood or aesthetic. Taipei is a city I’ve been to before, which means that walking back into the city with a camera is a different experience immediately. What do I love about Taipei? What textures in  Taipei appeals most to me? What do I remember of the city? These photos are a remnant of those thoughts and feelings. It was never about being able to take a spectacular photo, just maybe, an honest one.     Photos in order: 1 – 饒河夜市門口， RaoHe Night Market entrance 2 – 臺北地下街, Taipei City Underground Mall 3 – 大安區忠孝東路, Da An district, ZhongXiaoDong Street 4 – Somebody Cafe, 西門町，XimenDing 5 – 九份茶坊, Teahouse at Jiu Fen. 6 – 海邊的卡夫卡, Kafka by the Shore live music cafe

Textures of Taiwan: Taichung

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Taichung was a rest stop for us after the drama of Alishan. The highlight of Taichung, however, was the National Taiwan Museum of  Fine Arts. One of the best museums I’ve ever been in, full of intelligent, contemporary pieces. I only featured 4 photos for this post, but that’s also telling. Some places, you forget to capture because there is just too much to take in. I’d like to think that is the best way of being present.       Photos in order 1 – N Joy Taichung Hostel 2 – 國立台灣美術館 National Taiwan Museum of  Fine Arts. 3 – 國立台灣美術館 National Taiwan Museum of  Fine Arts. 4 – 國立台灣美術館 National Taiwan Museum of  Fine Arts

Modern Nomad

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What is in a home? On the bus away from Taipei I feel like I’m leaving home, and also going home. Homes on top of homes – my life feels like that at times. Discarding the city of a loved language. Returning to a city of difficult language. A new city waiting in familiar and unfamiliar language. Caught between cities and languages, between weather and lives, between pasts and futures, Summers are when I feel it most: My homelessness. A homelessness I some days tire of and some days embrace. My fingers are following telephone lines today. They crisscross this country like train tracks. mountain rivers, building oceans, concrete valleys, sandy sunsets and raindrop alleys and oh. the people. like art. like music. like tea and coffee steam. like the scrape of a metal wok and the boil of soup pots. Mountains here are the backs of lion turtles and the sky knows me by the browning of my skin and how I sweat. Browning with content. Home. Home. Home. To call the dusty outline …

Knowing Solitude

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「我是一個站在甲板上的孤獨航海者，她是海。」Murakami, Kafka by the Shore. Traveling with friends is a state of being always and never alone. Like everything else in this world, there are two sides to the joys and trials that come with traveling this way. Most interesting is the fact that traveling together does nothing to change the aloneness we each inhabit individually. The cities we are crossing mean completely different things to us, and each day is a fabric of emotions, experiences, and memories that are united only by the intention of traveling together. The presence of solitude in my days is recognisable, anything that sparks a tiny flame of joy however brief is a welcome sojourner. The egg blue walls of our room in the morning sunlight, and the privilege of being the first one awake, three other steady sets of breathing. The flat warm feeling of staircases, so much like another I know from many years ago. A different kind of conversation with the same person. and always, laughter. The first spoonful of a meal. The first respite for …

The Question of the Moment

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We’ve been traveling to some absolutely breathtaking places these past couple of days, and at every opportune moment the cameras are out and snapping. I love photography. I love everything it can do. I love everything it remembers. I love the framing of a scene, the manipulation of it and its eventual evolution into a creation all its own. Yet at almost every opportune moment this trip, I have either ran out of memory or battery early on, never able to capture the exact shot I’m waiting for, or try the ideas I have in my head. This is not a post that is interested in whether or not a camera ruins a moment. It is a post interested in the question of a moment. While watching the sun set among fresh clouds after a rainstorm in the mountains, my phone conveniently dead, I thought a lot about how to remember this moment. Because the truth is I won’t. Maybe something about the way the light hit everything from the peak all the way down …