Taipei didn't know it was the breath of fresh air I needed. I'm not sure how the city plays for others, but I experienced it principally in how it contrasts with the city I was coming from: Seoul, South Korea. Taiwan was the second country I visited outside the US after Korea, and the first in which I truly felt the existential might of being adrift on the far side of the world in a place where you don't know the language. I speak enough Korean to get by, but only as I stood, newly arrived, in the enormous and enormously crowded Taipei Main Station, surrounded by thousands of rushing souls, did I realize I lacked the equipage to speak to any of these people.
In those days I travelled internationally alone and without electronics. By choice I had no cell phone to help me; just a paper map and dog-eared phrasebook. I saw a young woman seated on the station's mezzanine floor by a wall, sobbing her eyes out. I couldn't help walking over. I tried to help, ask, apologize on behalf of the Universe for whatever her problems were... but I couldn't pronounce a coherent string of anything in Mandarin. That sensation of helplessness is something I recall as physical, a largeness settling around the base of your throat, hot and slightly dizzy.
It was because of this helplessness that I so noticed the city's warmth. Contrasted to Seoul it was earthier, simpler, and (in 2011 at least) less preoccupied with surfaces. Gone was Korea's famous obsession with plastic surgery– the platinum faces at every turn and the ads, shamelessly spelling out the superficiality American beauty ads only hint at ("Graduation gift ideas? Westernize your daughter's eyes!"). Everyone here felt, looked real. True.
They also knew I was a foreigner; that wasn't my experience in Korea. I know I don't look Korean, but I am. Somehow in Korea they knew that. I have no idea how. In Taiwan I was entirely and obviously from someplace else– and the people accepted me with open, if polite, arms. Yes, as all westerners traveling in east Asia have experienced, I was the last person to be sat next to on a subway; but the default in spoken interaction was kindness. Taipei isn't exactly mobbed with tourists in December and January, which is of course why I went there then... maybe there weren't enough visitors for me to be tiresome.
I will remember the rain. They have a word for how the damp wet coats every surface. How the cloudy, heavy sky mists and drips its vitality on everything casually, a subtropical gesture from on high, reminding us urban dwellers that nature has the final word on existence. I will remember wandering the rain-splattered neon streets after dark, visiting the famous 24-hour bookstore (now closed) and eating pineapple cake alone in the underground concourses and malls connecting the Zhongxiao stations, whole worlds down there. The incomparable, jaw-dropping scale of humanity at Zhongxiao Fuxing station, the Wenhu/Bannan subway line interchange. Imagine a uniformed woman directing traffic up top, surrounded by an endless pulsing sea of scooters and trucks in the night, all somehow conforming to her whistle, somehow never hitting her or each other.
A thousand souls all around you walking, pushing down the escalators together, and there's the subway we're going to, pulling in already but it's no big deal because the route is so frequent that by the time you get down these stairs the next train will arrive. And here it is now, ten 100-foot cars– yes, nearly a quarter-mile in length this vehicle, and every car crammed with souls. People waiting in orderly lines, demure, respectful... and nonstop. I could've watched it for hours. I did. I remind myself on occasion that that hubbub of activity is still going on, right this minute. Do you know the sensation of realizing all this life, these dense and cacophanous multitudinous cities, have been going on the entire time you've been alive? And you're only just now seeing it all for the first time?
I stood in a narrow alley not far from my hostel and looked down at the uneven ground, noticing a beetle. It occurred to me then: no one I know on this entire planet knows where I am right now. I am utterly unreachable. It felt overwhelming. It felt beautiful. I was present, as we never are nowadays. These images are a collection of such moments, culled from the unglamorous backsides of the city, the peace found at the ends of the lines, or else the hidden corners of its famous places.
I haven't gone back because how could I. The sublimity of first steps cannot be repeated, only cherished. Every moment was perfect, new, steeped in exactly what I needed then. I can't go back to this Taipei, the Taipei of these pictures. But that is okay. All the best things in life– whether people, moments, experiences– happen only once. They are unique, unrepeatable. I was taking pictures of things I knew I was unlikely to ever see again. Not to document them, but because doing so was akin to breathing, living. Do you know what I mean? Victor Hugo said it best, in my favorite quote of all time:
"As in the morning, he saw the trees pass by, the thatched roofs, the cultivated fields, and the dissolving views of the country which change at every turn of the road. Such scenes are sometimes sufficient for the soul, and almost do away with thought. To see a thousand objects for the first and for the last time. What can be deeper and more melancholy? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant."
For my technical process and more, explore my Photography page here.
In those days I travelled internationally alone and without electronics. By choice I had no cell phone to help me; just a paper map and dog-eared phrasebook. I saw a young woman seated on the station's mezzanine floor by a wall, sobbing her eyes out. I couldn't help walking over. I tried to help, ask, apologize on behalf of the Universe for whatever her problems were... but I couldn't pronounce a coherent string of anything in Mandarin. That sensation of helplessness is something I recall as physical, a largeness settling around the base of your throat, hot and slightly dizzy.
It was because of this helplessness that I so noticed the city's warmth. Contrasted to Seoul it was earthier, simpler, and (in 2011 at least) less preoccupied with surfaces. Gone was Korea's famous obsession with plastic surgery– the platinum faces at every turn and the ads, shamelessly spelling out the superficiality American beauty ads only hint at ("Graduation gift ideas? Westernize your daughter's eyes!"). Everyone here felt, looked real. True.
They also knew I was a foreigner; that wasn't my experience in Korea. I know I don't look Korean, but I am. Somehow in Korea they knew that. I have no idea how. In Taiwan I was entirely and obviously from someplace else– and the people accepted me with open, if polite, arms. Yes, as all westerners traveling in east Asia have experienced, I was the last person to be sat next to on a subway; but the default in spoken interaction was kindness. Taipei isn't exactly mobbed with tourists in December and January, which is of course why I went there then... maybe there weren't enough visitors for me to be tiresome.
I will remember the rain. They have a word for how the damp wet coats every surface. How the cloudy, heavy sky mists and drips its vitality on everything casually, a subtropical gesture from on high, reminding us urban dwellers that nature has the final word on existence. I will remember wandering the rain-splattered neon streets after dark, visiting the famous 24-hour bookstore (now closed) and eating pineapple cake alone in the underground concourses and malls connecting the Zhongxiao stations, whole worlds down there. The incomparable, jaw-dropping scale of humanity at Zhongxiao Fuxing station, the Wenhu/Bannan subway line interchange. Imagine a uniformed woman directing traffic up top, surrounded by an endless pulsing sea of scooters and trucks in the night, all somehow conforming to her whistle, somehow never hitting her or each other.
A thousand souls all around you walking, pushing down the escalators together, and there's the subway we're going to, pulling in already but it's no big deal because the route is so frequent that by the time you get down these stairs the next train will arrive. And here it is now, ten 100-foot cars– yes, nearly a quarter-mile in length this vehicle, and every car crammed with souls. People waiting in orderly lines, demure, respectful... and nonstop. I could've watched it for hours. I did. I remind myself on occasion that that hubbub of activity is still going on, right this minute. Do you know the sensation of realizing all this life, these dense and cacophanous multitudinous cities, have been going on the entire time you've been alive? And you're only just now seeing it all for the first time?
I stood in a narrow alley not far from my hostel and looked down at the uneven ground, noticing a beetle. It occurred to me then: no one I know on this entire planet knows where I am right now. I am utterly unreachable. It felt overwhelming. It felt beautiful. I was present, as we never are nowadays. These images are a collection of such moments, culled from the unglamorous backsides of the city, the peace found at the ends of the lines, or else the hidden corners of its famous places.
I haven't gone back because how could I. The sublimity of first steps cannot be repeated, only cherished. Every moment was perfect, new, steeped in exactly what I needed then. I can't go back to this Taipei, the Taipei of these pictures. But that is okay. All the best things in life– whether people, moments, experiences– happen only once. They are unique, unrepeatable. I was taking pictures of things I knew I was unlikely to ever see again. Not to document them, but because doing so was akin to breathing, living. Do you know what I mean? Victor Hugo said it best, in my favorite quote of all time:
"As in the morning, he saw the trees pass by, the thatched roofs, the cultivated fields, and the dissolving views of the country which change at every turn of the road. Such scenes are sometimes sufficient for the soul, and almost do away with thought. To see a thousand objects for the first and for the last time. What can be deeper and more melancholy? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant."
For my technical process and more, explore my Photography page here.
