Taipei in Focus: Visiting the Metropolis as a Photography Aficionado | 雜誌

PHOTOS　Chen Cheng-Kuo

With its mix of conventional and modern structure and its vibrant avenue scenes, Taipei offers a tantalizing backdrop for photographers. The metropolis additionally provides a variety of choices to see pictures exhibitions and store for high quality cameras and equipment in enticing shops that themselves double as subject material for photographers. Here are a couple of options for a photography-themed outing across the metropolis.

POTOGRAPHY MUSEUM 

An ideally suited selection for beginning a tour of Taipei with a deal with pictures is the National Center of Photography and Images (NCPI), which is centrally situated reverse Taipei Main Station. Constructed in 1937 because the Taiwan headquarters of a Japanese transport agency with worldwide operations, this museum’s constructing later housed the Taiwan Navigation Co. and the previous Taiwan Provincial Highway Bureau. Today, a everlasting exhibition titled Trans-Communication highlights the evolution of the constructing’s perform, noting that, in its present guise as a photograph repository, its “transit, exchange and communication” function has been maintained.

Regular exhibitions of latest works seem alongside thematic shows from the NCPI archive of greater than 13,000 photos and different property. Exhibitions usually function pioneers equivalent to Deng Nan-guang, Chang Tsai, and Lee Ming-tiao (the so-called “Three Musketeers” of Taiwanese pictures), the images being highly effective testaments to the dramatic sociopolitical shifts Taiwan has undergone. Lenses have often been directed on the marginalized and weak – indigenous peoples, political dissidents throughout democratization actions, and victims of pure disasters, powerfully evoking Taiwan’s resilience and hope within the face of adversity.

Restoration work on the constructing started in 2015, with the middle opening to the general public in 2021. The L-shaped inside optimizes gallery movement and accentuates the putting stairs on the core, a component that prompts guests to achieve for his or her cameras. Fusing occidental parts, together with a sturdy colonnade, with Japanese motifs equivalent to a pagoda-type tower, the façade of the neoclassical construction makes for an equally pleasing picture op when departing for the subsequent vacation spot on this record.

NATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND IMAGES 國家攝影文化中心

🚩70, Sec. 1, Zhongxiao W. Rd., Zhongzheng Dist.

📞(02) 8978-7040

🔗ncpi.ntmofa.gov.tw 

🕝Tue-Sun 10:00am-6:00pm

PHOTOGRAPHY SHOPS

The roughly 25-minute stroll from the NCPI constructing to Taipei’s historic Dadaocheng neighborhood takes you previous myriad different photogenic places, together with Taipei’s North Gate (often known as Beimen), a top-grade nationwide historic web site and the best-preserved of the 4 remaining portals to Taipei’s now-long-gone metropolis partitions.

Arriving at Dadaocheng’s historic and tourist-popular Dihua Street, you may get a great view of outdated Taipei. The slim, normally bustling thoroughfare has impressed imagemakers throughout media over time, with Kuo Hsueh-hu’s 1930 portray Festival on South Street maybe probably the most iconic impression. The 2014 film Twa-Tiu-Tiann (Taiwanese for the Mandarin “Dadaocheng”) additionally offered a memorable snapshot of the realm.

While a lot of the structure alongside the road dates from the 1895~1945 Japanese period, the timber-framed storefronts with sliding doorways reveal Qing Dynasty touches. Among these is the understated exterior of the Olympus Plaza Taipei, which opened in 2019, in a constructing that had beforehand served as a personal residence, paediatric clinic, and buying and selling agency throughout its 100-year historical past. The constructing, proud recipient of the 2022 Taipei Architecture Renovation Award, is it self a preferred pictures topic.

Bisecting the inside at knee stage is a sturdy log emblazoned with the Olympus emblem, the concentric progress rings making a neat metaphor for a focusing lens. Suspended above, vertical pendant lighting warmly illuminates the merchandise showcased on the show counter.

In addition to a variety of cameras, from the classic Olympus twin-lens reflex fashions of the Fifties to the most recent motion gadgets from Insta360, the shop provides pictures associated souvenirs and paraphernalia, together with artisan digicam straps from Jouer8, a Taichung-based model. A studio and an exhibit area the place visible arts are intermittently showcased are situated on the higher flooring.

OLYMPUS PLAZA TAIPEI

🚩142, Sec. 1, Dihua St., Datong Dist.

📞(02) 2553-8826

🔗www.olympusplaza.tw

🕝11:00am-7:00pm (closed on first Mon of month)

If the Olympus Plaza Taipei communicates fashion and refinement, the premises of the House of Leica take understated magnificence o the subsequent stage. Tucked down a leafy lane off Qingtian Street in Daan District, near the tourist-popular Yongkang Street space, the constructing is definitely ignored by passing pedestrians. But for the small purple orb jutting out from the front-courtyard wall, displaying the cursive white script of the Leica emblem, one would possibly mistake this constructing for one of many space’s restored historic homes, that are off-limits to the general public.

The mellow blue-gray clapboarding of the picket bungalow, which as soon as served as a dormitory for school at Taihoku Imperial University (now National Taiwan University), contrasts with the gleaming surfaces and cupboards of the inside and the glass roof, which floods the area with pure gentle. Latest cameras, sports activities optics, and equipment from the German model are introduced. A central washitsu-type area (minus the standard tatami mats), outfitted with a espresso counter that’s powered by a handcrafted La Marzocco machine, is used for reveals, occasions, and programs introduced underneath the Leica Akademie program.

Emphasizing the model’s international outreach, current expositions have included winners of the 2025 Leica Oskar Barnack Award, named for the corporate’s founder. These are targeted on underrepresented areas such because the “breakaway” state of Transnistria in Moldova and the plight of marginalized teams, equivalent to Venezuelan immigrants in Mexico. Near the doorway is a bookcase stocked with coffee-table collections from businesses equivalent to Magnum and giants of pictures equivalent to Lee Friedlander.

HOUSE OF LEICA TAIPEI QINGTIAN 台北徠卡之家

🚩3, Ln. 6, Qingtian St., Daan Dist.

📞(02) 2391-2593

🕝10:00am-8:00pm

PHOTO GALLERIES

Books are the focus at Lightbox, a pictures library located a 15-minute stroll from the Leica showroom. Run as a nonprofit, Taiwan-focused area, with an emphasis on inclusivity, Lightbox offers a serene, minimalistic area for shopping and contemplation. While the lion’s share of the volumes that line the cabinets are photography-focused, lots are usually not. Instead, an eclectic mixture of works, loosely themed across the thought of impressions, is discovered.

The library homes many limited-edition and uncommon pictures books, with quite a few out-of-print volumes. Among them, the Taiwan Photographic Album, printed in 1908 in the course of the Japanese period, preserves the landscapes and customs of Taiwan from a century in the past. Other noteworthy works are military doctor Rene Coppin’s French-language account of the Sino-French War of 1884~1885 and the modern picture essay Becoming Taiwanese by Liang-Pin Tsao, which paperwork the reinvention of Japanese Shinto shrines in Taiwan as martyrs’ shrines within the post-WWII period.

Regularly internet hosting lectures, instructional excursions, and trade occasions such because the biennial New Wave Photography Award, Lightbox is a should for guests trying to achieve an understanding of Taiwan’s pictures setting.

LIGHTBOX 攝影圖書室

🚩19, Ln. 269, Sec. 3, Roosevelt Rd., Daan Dist.

📞(02) 2367-8161

🔗www.lightboxlib.org

🕝Thu-Sat 2:00pm-7:00pm

Close to the enticing riverside parklands of Zhongshan’s Dazhi neighborhood, YellowKorner provides limited-edition prints from world-renowned photographers. This department of the Paris-founded gallery chain opened in 2021, its remit to carry internationally acclaimed photographic artworks to collectors in Taiwan.

Among probably the most outstanding collectibles is a monochromic portrait of pop-art maestro Andy Warhol brandishing a Polaroid digicam along with his personal picture dangling from the system’s ejection slot. Part of a 500-print run, the picture was captured by Italian lensman Oscar Toscani.

Elsewhere, works by native photographers equivalent to Po Chen, who first got here to prominence in 2010 with an album documenting Indian shantytowns, are additionally obtainable. Po Chen has extra just lately targeted on photos of serene marine vistas, that are credited for his or her “soothing effects” that “should be prescribed for anyone wanting to embark on the path of zen.”

Developed on the gallery’s personal laboratory, high-quality prints of pictures include QR codes that may be scanned to generate tamper-proof authentication certificates.

YellowKorner

🚩91, Lequn 2nd Rd., Zhongshan Dist.

📞(02) 2595-3039

🔗yellowkornertw.com

🕝Tue-Sat 10:00am-7:00pm; Sun 10:00-6:00pm