G-E-book 女子冊 | PhMuseum

G-book is a long-term mission begun in Taiwan in 2016, following ladies throughout ages, our bodies, identities, and phases of life. Through intimate, collaborative portraits, it traces how time, reminiscence, care, and selection grow to be seen by the physique.

G-book: Time Lives within the Body

G-book is an ongoing photographic mission I started in Taiwan in 2016. The “G” stands for “girls,” whereas its Chinese title, 女子冊, will be understood as a e book of ladies. Through portraits, intimate encounters, and pictures revamped a few years, the mission follows ladies of various ages, our bodies, professions, identities, and phases of life. Its central topic is time: the way it enters the physique, leaves proof, and shapes the methods an individual continues to grow to be herself. Being good is pointless.

The mission started with no fastened conclusion. I saved returning to ladies due to one thing I first realized from my mom. She has lived by many difficulties with gentleness and quiet power, instructing me that power doesn’t all the time seem as confrontation or heroism. Sometimes it’s present in caring, ready, enduring, and persevering with to reside. I’ve not but photographed her; she stays too singular and essential for me to know how one can comprise her in a picture. This unfinished activity jogs my memory that images can’t make a life full, however it could possibly protect a fraction of a second earlier than time carries it away.

Some members got here by likelihood encounters; others are childhood mates, artists, performers, or folks I’ve photographed by completely different phases of their lives. A woman stands on the fringe of adolescence earlier than coming into the disciplined efficiency of ballroom dance. A childhood buddy returns virtually twenty years later carrying a toddler. One lady, born with out hair, chooses a distinct head every day by wigs, whereas one other shaves hers as a result of she prefers the sensation. Tattoos, surgical scars, being pregnant, clothes, efficiency, and gestures grow to be traces of selections made upon and thru the physique. In one Paiwan household in southern Taiwan, two family proceed to guard non-public truths that solely they share, preserving one another’s proper to resolve when and how one can be seen.

My technique relies on time, belief, and continued relationships. I {photograph} members of their houses, workplaces, neighborhoods, and areas of transformation. Before every shoot, we start from their current situation: they gown and current themselves in no matter method feels proper to them, with the benefit of mates assembly and making pictures collectively. Some pictures are observational; others are collaboratively constructed by clothes, make-up, motion, or play. For intimate tales, I talk about what could also be proven and the way every individual needs to be recognized. When publication dangers violating that belief, I withdraw the picture.

At first, I believed I used to be preserving these ladies’s lives. Years later, I perceive that their braveness additionally formed the individual I grew to become. No single participant modified me; the transformation gathered by each encounter. G-book is my quiet type of rebel towards a tradition that quickly produces, consumes, and forgets pictures, and underestimates the burden of sincerity.

I hope the work reminds viewers to not abandon who they’re when confronted by judgment, distortion, or hostility. Quietness right here will not be passivity, however the time by which expertise turns into discernment. Years from now, I hope somebody in Taiwan will encounter these pictures and acknowledge how we dressed, desired, cared for each other, protected our secrets and techniques, and tried to reside in truth on this second. Photography turns into proof not solely that we lived, however of how we saved turning into ourselves.

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