In this chapter, I study the photographs in I Do I Do I Do to see how Chang looks awry at the wedding rituals in Taiwan. As his first book, this series of photographs show us the scenes of taking wedding pictures and those of wedding rituals, which in fact deal with the threshold of a new family. The couples get married, leaving their original home and starting a new one hereafter with their mates. They go through the rituals in which fantasy works, so that their relation can be recognized in the symbolic order.
By traversing the fantasy, we see that their marriage is decided by illusion and they seem not to appear as lovely couples under Chang’s camera. The connection between them appears to be alienated and their close relation seems to be split since the beginning.
Chang has “to do something to channel all this traditional family
pressure” (Brown 49) from his parents so that he does this project; he appears to be confused of the wedding rituals in Taiwan so that he tries to seek answers with the photographic images. His confusion is likely to come from some bigger questions, which have much to do with the family relationship in reality. Marriage, as a possible foundation of a new family, thus becomes the question Chang tries to look into. However, as he seeks answers with his photographic images, he runs away to avoid the answers so as to keep asking questions towards the complex family relationship.
Chapter Three: Meet the Real Contradiction in The Chain 3.1 Preface
In this chapter, I study how Chang’s photographs deal with the real contradiction of the society in Taiwan. Through a close reading of Chang’s book The Chain,30 I will discuss the main theme in this book in order to traverse the fantasy of “the chain.”
In his most famous work31 “The Chain,” Chang shoots the vertically composed, frontal whole-length portraits of the mental patients in Long Fa Tang Temple, a mental asylum in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. He spends almost six years discontinuously from 1993 to 1999, getting admission to take photographs as well as observing the life of the 700 patients, who are shaved and chained two by two with “the Chain of Compassion” and who work everyday from five o’clock in the morning to six o’clock in the evening on the twenty-hectare chicken farm, taking care of one million chickens. The photographs we see today are taken in one afternoon in October 1998 as these
30 According to the format by Parr and Badger, the details of this book are as follow:
Trolley, London, 2002.
Hardcover, 106 pages.
5.5×7.75 in (145×210 mm).
48 duotone images.
Photographs by Chien-Chi Chang. Essay by Cheryl Lai.
31 This series of photographs has been exhibited in Taipei Fine Art Museum in 2000, 2001 La Biennale di Venezia, 2002 Bienal de São Paulo, and the First ICP (International Center of Photography, New York) Triennial of Photography and Video in 2003.
patients, who just finish lunch, stop a little while on their way back to work for Chang to shoot with camera. In this chapter, I argue that the chain in these photographs appearing as fantasy, is applied to be a symbolic resolution of the unbearable situations in reality for the society in Taiwan. From studying the theme of the book, the fantasy would be traversed so that the cultural meaning of these photographs would be revealed.
The former concerns on Long Fa Tang Temple mostly focus on questioning its legal stages as a mental institution and the human rights of these mental patients.32 The researchers clarify this problem from the perspective of the mental patients’ families, of the society, and of the psychiatrists. However, they do not show their attempts to learn how the mental patients may feel. As for the photographic images, Ben-Chi Chou and Tsung-Hui Ho, who have photographed this subject in 1980s, take the scenes of the life in Long Fa Tang Temple. Chou pays attention to the scenes that would raise sympathy: he focuses on their life and shows us how they live. In the photographs (Chou, Ben-Chi 18-31), the patients appear as passive victims: they live in a dirty place; some of them are naked, sitting on the ground; some of them are confined or chained; some of them are fed since
32 Here are some examples: Huang, Ting-Chun; Huang, Jine-Shing; Shen, Hsien-Cheng.
they do not have the ability to take care of themselves. They seem to wait for the society to save them and offer them better treatment. Chou places his own article along with the photographs he takes. In this essay, he describes his own experience of visiting Long Fa Tang Temple, which raises his sympathy and pity towards the patients; he also questions the laws in Taiwan which do not protect the mental patients so that they cannot receive good medical treatments. Ho presents us the dim images of the mental patients.
The commentaries on Ho’s work mostly emphasize his personal artistic creation, separating his work clearly from the reportage photography.33 Since he neglects the facial expression but focuses on the body languages of the mental patients, we cannot learn the social-historical context from his photographs but encounter with the shock of puctum.34 Compared with the two photographers’ works, Chang’s photographs show us the clear frontal whole-length portraits. His work is not only artistic creation, but also reportage photography since the article in the book provides the historical background and the preliminary understanding of the life in Long Fa Tang Temple. I shall study the photographs in his book to see how he deals with this issue.
33 See Han-Dee Huang’s and Ben-Kuan Yu’s articles.
34 Yu-Ling Chou discussed the puctum of Ho’s photographs in her thesis.
In the previous critiques, there are mainly two arguments, which see the chain as a metaphor, but they seem to be chained by it, too. Firstly, Fumio Nanjo clearly points out that the visible chain in the photographs—the Chain of Compassion which binds these mental patients, and the invisible chain in reality—our desire, are both what Chang’s photographs invite us to pay attention to. Not only these patients in photographs, but also all of us, are bound by the chain, the bondage in marriage, family, and society which is not only connection but also restriction. In other words, if they are chained for their madness, we may somehow be mad as we are chained by the invisible bondage. Secondly, the photographs bring out the issue of panopticon.
Fumio Nanjo argues that the chain in the photographs is the postmodernist panopticon in which each of the patients watches over the other one. This kind of control and demand is similar to that in reality, especially in marriage.
Pei-Chun Tsai considers that Chang does a “double reflection” on the double imprisonment of the chain as the rationalized disciplinary means by the asylum’s authority and of the photograph as the confinement of reality by photographer. Fang-Wei Chang interprets the panopticon in the other form:
the artist (photographer) as the spectator, the photographed as artists, and the spectators as the ones who are being looked by the subjects in photographs so
that the mechanism of power is reversed. It is the spectators who are watched by the subjects in the mechanism of panopticon.
Thus, they consider that in the photographs Chang tries to tell us that we are also mad to some extent. Both of the viewpoints argue that it is the social madness that Chang’s photographs are asking. However, they stop while shedding light on the relation between the chain and the society so that they appear to be chained by the chain metaphor in their analysis. This series of photographs shall not be read independently. The article “Letter of a Madman” in this book provides the context, which helps us to situate these photographs. From here I shall commence my study and I aim at seeing how we can approach to the issue of Long Fa Tang Temple and its mental patients through Chang’s photographs in the book The Chain.35