The changing conceptions of reality in photographic art: An analysis of the works of four Taiwanese photographers.

摘要

The view that photography is dead or obsolete has posited the role of photography as being fixed and unchangeable, and identity is assumed as always being stable, complete, and atemporal. The very conception of reality is at stake when new approaches to knowledge of photography are concerned. This study is an aesthetic and artistic inquiry into the conceptions of reality in photographic art based on narrative inquiry of auto/ethnography methodology in which self-reflexivity is emphasized through the description and interpretation of artwork. Four Taiwanese photographers are investigated, Chao-Tang Chang, Daniel Xiao-Jing Lee, Diing-Wuu Wu Walis La-Bai, and May-Ling Chang; the historicity and cultural embeddedness of art works are also stressed.;The data of the study reveals: (1) the artists respond to the changing nature of reality and its temporal quality; (2) the artists participate in the construction of reality in socio-cultural contexts as an active responsive agent and (3) the artists invent artistic languages to transform reality in which photography functions as text for complex encounters with viewers. Photography is an aesthetic construction and transformation of reality, as a structured and structuring space, within which the photographers and the viewers make sense of their worlds.