We are looking for papers for an online panel:
Wayfaring: Photography in Taiwan during the Martial Law Era (1949-1987) for the 111th Annual Conference of CAA to be held February 15—18, 2023
Session Chairs:
Shuxia Chen, University of New South Wales <shuxia.c@gmail.com>
Olivier Krischer, University of New South Wales <okrischer@gmail.com>
Research on Taiwan’s long and complex photography history has been limited in Chinese and English to date, with much attention paid to the earliest examples of the medium in the 19th and early-20th century. This panel instead gathers new research on the history of photography across the Martial Law era (from 1949 to 1987) under the concept of ‘wayfaring’—a lyrical take on the what pioneering photographer Chang Chao-Tang described as the ‘path seeking’ (zhaolu) of photographers in the 1970s. This term evokes both the actual journeys photographers undertook across the Taiwanese landscape, searching for diverse everyday experiences, as well as their introspective search for a new path forward through creative experimentation. Photographers in Taiwan confronted complex and intersecting historical trajectories.
This panel welcomes research that attends to contending claims not only on local and cultural identity, but also gender, sexuality, indigeneity, and social class. It seeks to understand the relevance of photographic practices from Taiwan as parts of global developments in the medium, comparing and contrasting Taiwanese photographic experience to that of its peers worldwide.
Please send the following via email to session chairs by August 31, 2022.
- Presentation title and abstract (250 words maximum)
- A shortened CV (close to 2 pages) and a short bio (150 words maximum)