It's the third day of the Lunar New Year that I've spent in a wonderful solitude. With everyone else living on this floor gone, I've felt a bit more like a hermit. Even though I usually avoid contact with them and have no idea what they even look like, I'm always aware of them when they're around as I can hear their comings and goings. The first three days are the official holiday, and days four to six are when things start getting back to normal. It's possible everyone will remain gone until Wednesday, it's possible they might start floating back tomorrow. I'll know when they return because I will hear them.

My mother was in town last weekend for several days. She had been on a cruise, disembarking in Singapore, and flew to Taipei for a few days before flying back to the U.S. My uncle came up from Kaohsiung to spend time with her. I think his thinking may have been that they're getting old, no one knows when will be the last time they see each other, so take advantage of every opportunity to meet up. Neither of them I figure for being sentimental types, but it's possible. I don't know him that well really. She's definitely not. She said she came to see me, but the truth is we can only stand each other for a few hours at a time so maybe she did ask him to come up. She still thinks I'm working so I always have an excuse to bail, and true to her own work ethic, she would never prioritize herself over someone else's job.

On her last day here (she was flying out in the afternoon), she expected to meet up with me at lunch and initially said that my uncle wouldn't be with us because his son, my cousin Gary, was flying in that morning from mainland China for Lunar New Year and so he would meet up with him and they'd go directly to Kaohsiung by HSR. I had to brace for one more excruciating lunch without his buffer. 

But then prior to that, I realized that didn't make sense. Gary was flying into the airport that my mother was flying out of later that day and they weren't going to meet up? My mother doesn't give a rat's ass – not the sentimental type, I said – but Gary has something like an overblown sense of responsibility and family decorum almost to a fault. In his mind, if there was a chance to meet his aunt (who sat at the table of honor at his wedding), even if only for a few hours, he was going to make it happen. Turns out I was right and when I arrived at the hotel, my uncle was still there and Gary and his 10 year old son were on their way from the airport by MRT to Taipei for us to have lunch before they departed for Kaohsiung, my mother to the airport, and me . . . to "work", of course. I didn't even have time to accompany them to the airport.

There was some discomfort as to why I wasn't going to Kaohsiung for New Years until I came up with the excuse that I had already volunteered to work over the holiday since I was basically a foreigner and the Lunar New Year didn't mean as much to me. I'm a terrible liar, and of course when you start lying you have to back it up, and I hadn't prepped myself for Gary (whose English is decent) to get inquisitive about my job and my having to make things up on the spot, particularly difficult since The China Post went under as a physical paper many years ago (it may still be online, but if it is it's no longer a major news player in Taiwan).  

But there really was no way I would go to Kaohsiung for the holiday. As has happened before, whenever I'm placed in an extended family setting I have to keep my mouth shut. If I selfishly open my mouth to say something, whatever conversation had been going on had to stop and focus on me, the only English-only speaker. I prefer to consider myself persona non grata. I haven't heard from Gary's sister, Audrey, any time recently. I have no idea where she lives now nor whether she's flying in for the New Year, and if she has no expectation of meeting up with me, then really no one does or even should. 

As far as family is concerned, all is as should be. My sister-in-law and I used to email each other twice a year but she didn't at all last year. Doesn't mean she won't, but I ain't expecting anything. I did send that birthday greeting to my brother in July and he responded, but proper form between us meant that was all – greeting and response, it wasn't supposed to be a communication or continued exchange. 

Sometimes I think I just have to face that these people just don't like me, lol! And there's no reason for them to like me, I give them no reason to think I want them to like me. Theoretically I know I can contact anyone at any time about whatever, but my principle of don't be something to someone and then disappear prevents, since my disappearing is always an option or an intention, even if not likely or immediately manifesting. What's their excuse for not contacting me? Maybe I'm lacking in imagination, but the foremost reason is they don't wanna because they just don't like me, lol! Why would you contact someone you don't like? Why wouldn't you contact someone you like and haven't heard from in years?

I know relationships are complicated and this line of thinking is totally faulty. I have friends I've been out of contact for years and nothing is preventing me from saying 'hi', but I don't. Saying 'hi' isn't being something to someone, it's just saying 'hi'. I can say 'hi' and kill myself the next day and it would just be what it would be. No different with family. You just expect them to be there merrily rolling along. No one knows when will be the last time they see each other, so there's no reason to think there won't be a next time.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2019,1:54 p.m. - They day I found out The Living Mall had died closed.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2019, 3:13 p.m. - Sanmin Branch Taipei Public Library, 6th fl. photostitch.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2019, 3:03 p.m. - Through a window on a side street.

3:23 p.m. - The dead Living Mall from the southeast side, access fenced up. It kinda resembles the Jawa sandcrawlers on this side. Total coincident that the sphere on the other side looks like the Death Star.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2019, 2:55 p.m. - Temple on Ba De Rd.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 1:43 p.m. - And all the crap on the plaza outside The Living Mall that obscured appreciation of the architecture.

In the batch of photos I posted last month, I mused that some shots would've been better in black & white. Black & white is my preferred medium, and it was easy when all I had to do was slap a roll of black & white film into a camera. With digital, the default is color and I don't have the talent or skill to use the "black & white mode" and have things come out satisfactorily or even workable in post-production. The reason behind those shots is that I was just shooting how I always did, looking at form and composition and not thinking how color might make them mundane and pedestrian. Adding that color dimension back to reality and it's one dimension back to ordinary. 

But that got me thinking and recalling hearing that for digital black & white, it's better to shoot in color, emphatically not in the camera's black & white mode, and remove the color in post. I was always closed-minded about that, feeling that if I was shooting in color, I was seeing and thinking in color. That's not black & white! Closed-minded, I tell you.

But for December, I thought why not at least give it a shot? Shoot with my little digital point and shoot with the intent that the final image will be black & white. I'm still figuring out the best way to remove color and choosing which method I like best. As a baseline, I use GIMP's basic desaturate function and then adjust contrast and brightness, which is standard for me. I'm experimenting with another function in GIMP called "mono mixer" which removes the color, but then you can adjust red, blue and green values as represented in black & white tonalities. I currently have no idea what I'm doing with that, I'm pretty much floundering haphazardly hoping for serendipity. The color controls don't work like filters do with black & white, and I haven't figured out the logic in adjusting them. I don't know if one adjustment for one color may be cancelling out another adjustment I did with another. As for results, sometimes I like the straight desaturation, sometimes I like the mono mixed version; so far almost 50-50. I have no idea what I'm doing with green in mono mixer, but in general I like the tonality of foliage I get when using mono mixer. But that doesn't mean anything because I simply have no idea what I'm doing.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1:52 p.m. - The Living Mall died at the end of November. Those cars at the base of the sphere don't belong there and probably belong to workers or owners orchestrating removal of remaining contents.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1:45 p.m. - The (dead) Living Mall from the other side. The sidewalks surrounding the mall have all been fenced up.

2:33 p.m. - Across Civic Blvd. from The Living Mall is the Taiwan Railways workshop. It's no longer functional and I think they're trying to turn it into a museum/park. If the timing fell into place, The Living Mall could have survived by integrating this entire area into something like Huashan 1914 Cultural Park. The railway workshop is adjacent to Songshan Eslite Spectrum (behind me) and the refurbished grounds of a tobacco factory transformed into a cultural/creative arts center. A footbridge should have connected The Living Mall with the cultural park over Civic Blvd., and the trees outside The Living Mall should've been removed creating an open plaza that would allow proper appreciation for the architecture (which the footbridge also would've done). There was a lot of "wow" potential in this area. I'm sure timing was the least of why it couldn't happen.

4:10 p.m. - Holiday spirit, Songshan Eslite Spectrum. Buildings of the former tobacco factory-now-arts center in the background.

4:15 p.m. - Meeting up. I shot a series so I know they were meeting up.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2:25 p.m. - Taiwan supports Hong Kong against Mainland China's Communist Party, Keelung riverside bikeway. 

2:37 p.m. - The new park I discovered last month along the Keelung River.

3:10 p.m. - A mall/business complex across from Nangang Software Park MRT station on the brown line. Personally I'm not very impressed by it because of the confusing floor plan (effects of aging, no doubt) and it doesn't even seem to have a proper name to refer it by. Still it seems to be fairly popular on weekends, more so than The Living Mall was in the past however many years. 

MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2:17 p.m. - Keelung River. This was pretty in color (as was the previous pic), but this is what black & white was about for me. It doesn't matter if it's pretty in color, if I'm committed to black & white, I'm sticking to the black & white version. With film I never thought 'oh this would've been pretty in color'.

2:18 p.m. - Actually two bridges in this shot. Chenggong Bridge with the supports in the river and Huandong Expressway with the arches.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 23, 3:24 p.m. - Sixth floor, Taipei Public Library, Sanmin branch.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2:27 p.m - Yanshou Park No. 3, across from Taipei Public Library, Minsheng branch.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 26, 3:33 p.m. - Just architecture of unusual character (AOUC) amidst Taipei's endless, monotonous sprawl of unexceptional low-rises (one of which I live in).

So yea, I've been slipping my 10+ year-old 8 megapixel (huge when I bought it) Canon point-and-shoot into a backpack pocket and taking pics when fancy strikes. I'm not doing anything by doing it. It might be something like a last hurrah, similar with music and playing bass along with K-pop tunes for ear-training less than 2 hours everyday for the past two years, revisiting it as something I "used to do" while letting go any idea of it as a part of any identity. It's just something familiar and not a function of ego and as soon as it's not fun, I'll stop.

I've also found myself perusing photography books in the libraries and bookstores. Not sure why, perhaps for inspiration for what I'm not doing, but also investigating what it was and why it once was something I did. I discovered several photographers that I'd never heard of, despite them being apparently famous. I'm also fascinated by the text and commentary accompanying these books as they look into the psychology and character traits of the photographers, suggested by their photographs. Stuff that I recognize in myself or not, stuff that I agree with or not, but agreement or not it's all out there and valid or not. Quite frustrating, actually.

I guess the bottom line for me is that it's just personal, like this blog, and not for anyone else. It's just what I'm finding out about myself. 

Ansel Adams writes in his autobiography: Photographers who frequently travel photograph with less than full knowledge of their subjects. I believe one must live in a region for a considerable time and absorb its character and spirit before the work can truly reflect the experience of the place. In my own case, hasty visits have usually resulted in inconsequential images; perhaps an occasional flash of insight, or a remembrance of an earlier place or time helped in visualizing a photograph. 

Me, I've lived in Taiwan for over 13 years and I haven't absorbed the character and spirit of this place. I lived in San Francisco 11 years and didn't absorb the character and spirit of the place. So what is he talking about? That was it for him, that was important to him. Me, not so much. I'm a permanent outsider and I shoot as an outsider, never absorbing the character and spirit of a place. I actually identify more as an exile.

Or not (Josef Koudelka became an exile from his native Czechoslovakia a few years after the Soviet invasion in 1968):

"I didn't want to have what people call a 'home.' I didn't want to have the desire to return somewhere, I needed to know that nothing was waiting for me anywhere, that the place I was supposed to be was where I was at the moment. I once met a great guy, a Yugoslavian gypsy. We became friends. One day he told me, 'Josef, you've traveled for so many years, never stopped; you've seen lots of people and countries, all sorts of places. Tell me which place is the best. Where would you like to stay?' I didn't say anything. Just as I was about to leave, he asked again. I didn't want to answer him, but he kept on insisting. Finally he said, 'You know, I've figured it out! You don't want to answer because you still haven't found the best place. You travel because you're still trying to find it.' 'My friend,' I replied, 'you've got it all wrong. I'm desperately trying not to find that place.'"

If I posit myself as an urban hermit, I pale to his example. I'm stuck in neurotic, useless routines and my "best place" is my apartment where I'm meaninglessly complacently doing nothing for nobody, and which becomes a prison or a deeply egoistic sanctuary. There's no hint that he'd read even a word of Buddhism or Zen or enlightenment, but he was kinda living that path. Of course I don't know what drove him, but for my purposes I wish I could be like that.

Garry Winogrand was similarly an enigma:

. . . preferring to spend another day shooting rather than processing his film or editing his pictures. No prints existed of many of the best photographs he made in his first decades, and he left behind over sixty-five hundred rolls of film from his later years that he had never processed, or that he processed but never proofed, and whose content he had therefore never seen . . . and though his negatives and proof sheets . . . were numbered, there was no indication where one year ended and another began or where in the world Winogrand was when he exposed any given roll of film. 

That leaves me aghast 😱, as I'm the complete opposite with all my proof sheets and files meticulously numbered and dated. Is that a reflection of ego? Was his M.O. a function of non-ego? Not necessarily, probably not, who knows? But he was a photographer who didn't seem particularly interested in the photo. Was it that he was more interested in the process rather than the result? Was it not even that but the energy of being on the city streets and the flow of humanity and snapping photos in some ineffable effort to capture or see things that are otherwise fleeting and unnoticed?

To be sure, I couldn't shoot like he did, getting in close and shooting without permission or respect even. I recently watched a YouTube video of a Hong Kong/Londoner (his accent sounds too British to be Hong Kong British English) named Kai who was shooting like that in Taiwan and it just seemed rude and disrespectful, often confirmed by the videoed subjects' alarmed reactions. I'm not criticizing it, and the photos themselves were quite good. They did what they did to get their shots, I'm just unwilling to go there and would therefore never get those kinds of shots. 

Back to Winogrand, Ansel Adams, an early advocate (and perhaps paragon) of photography as fine art, would never entrust someone else to print his negatives without meticulous instruction on how he wanted it. That's another school of thought, where the artist's vision is emphasized. There's no art in shooting and then leaving printing or editing, which to Adams is interpretation, to someone else. There's also nothing wrong with that, either. Frustrating, see.

I found a Pablo Ortiz Monasterio monograph in the library that I think is a limited edition. It was printed on a specially selected Japanese paper that Ansel Adams would've appreciated. Adams was also concerned about reproductions of his work and that they reflected the quality of his original prints as much as possible.

Needless to say, all of these monographs are incredible and thought-provoking. There is a ridiculously broad range of even just street photography that is legitimate and valid, despite conflicts and contradictions and arguments for or against whatever. Like for me, context is important. Photography involves a mix of abstraction and reality. The image is actually quite abstract, which is why I always flipped black & white images unless there were words prominent that would call attention to that fact. There's the confinement of the frame, there's the loss of the depth dimension, there's the loss of color, and flipping the image was one more degree of abstracting the image; another way of saying what I saw didn't look like this at all. Context emphasizes the reality; this happened at an identifiable location, facing a certain direction with elements that were observable in the real world. Others may hate that and want to just appreciate the image on its own if it's worth it. It's like songwriters who never say what a song is about because once they do, that meaning is frozen and no one else can interpret it and give it meaning for themselves. Fair 'nuff, but out of all the descriptions, analyses and critiques of photos and photography, ain't nothin' gonna stop people shooting the way they do.

I'm under the description of photographers who try to be anonymous and discrete. Composition is important, but sometimes varying degrees of speed and spontaneity are necessary. If people are in the shot, their attention is not drawn to that fact. I'm not aggressive and in-your-face like Winogrand or that Hong Kong Kai guy. No doubt mine is a very common, pedestrian approach.

November snapshots

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 3:08 p.m. - Xinyi District. The building to the left of Taipei 101 is the new building in the skyline, opened this year. I love how from this angle there are two impressions of 101 on it; one the direct shadow, the other a reflection.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 11:40 a.m. - Right angles. Songjiang-Nanjing area.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 4:22 p.m. - Curves. The Living Mall, about to die. It will close its doors at the end of the month. Quite honestly it was a death a long time coming.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 9:00 a.m. - Alter. Laying groundwork for transformations.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 3:20 p.m. - I took a bunch of shots in this area, but immediately after shooting this I put away my camera thinking, "I got my shot", and rode away. Catching the sunlight off the flanges on 101 may be new for me.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2:10 p.m. - Plane taking off from Songshan Airport.

2:18 p.m. - Softball diamonds, riverside park, Neihu District.

2:30 p.m. - Minquan Rd. Bridge, Neihu District. I didn't notice they're both looking right at the camera!

2:46 p.m. - So I was at this little hole in the wall, and . . . 

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2:35 p.m. - Abandoned building looks surprised at being abandoned. West of Taipei Main Station.

2:39 p.m. - West of Taipei Main Station, along Zhongxiao W. Rd.

2:45 p.m. - Traditional characters. None of that simplified character shit those simpletons use in mainland China.

2:50-2:53 p.m. - West of Taipei Main Station. This area of several blocks, I think, used to be housing historically for military veterans of the Chinese Civil War and dependents. In my time here, people still lived in the area but it's now undergoing some sort of . . . reckoning. The top picture is a recent construction, I shouldn't wonder, and old houses had to be razed for this . . . beautification? The bottom pic is shot blind over the fence, and the government may be undecided whether to preserve, refurbish or raze the rest of what are basically ruins. Personally, I think something should be preserved to let people know of the history, while also doing something about the dilapidated nature of the ruins.

2:58 p.m. - Same area along Civic Blvd.

4:29 p.m. - Taipei Main Station.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2:31 p.m. - Taiwan-style graffiti, riverside bikeway. It will be white-washed over in a few weeks or months.

2:52 p.m. - New riverside park created over the summer when I wasn't riding in this area. This used to be a fenced-off area along the bikeway that seemed to be a combination of industrial wasteland of an adjacent factory and wild land that feral animals inhabited.

2:57 p.m. - The new park re-routes the bikeway. It used to run closer to the Keelung River along that fence at the bottom right of the pic. The suspension tower is the ruin of, I'm guessing, a bridge that crossed the Keelung River in the early part of the 20th century during the Japanese colonial period. From the old bikeway, it was visible but I never found an aesthetic way to shoot it. They kept it when they created the park, but now everyone is going to shoot it to death on their telephones, so I decided I didn't want to. Until that crane (egret?) landed on it.

3:14 p.m. - The giant cloud-striding spider descended the cloud bank that had lowered enough for it reach Taipei 101, down which it was able to reach terra firma, wreaking havoc and devouring tourists and locals alike. Death does not discriminate. It never rarely sometimes has . . . it does when humans are involved, but not giant spiders.

3:16 p.m. - Or not. The new park has a hill to climb. This is at the top.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1:38 p.m - Civic Blvd. elevated freeway and Eslite Spectrum. There used to be railroad here that led to the old Taiwan Railroad Administration workshop (unseen just left of center). The rails and buildings of the workshop still exist and I hear they're trying to create a historical museum and park to open to the public. 

3:24 p.m. - The new building in the Xinyi District skyline.

4:22 p.m. - Marshmallow sky, someone called it.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2:09 p.m. - Large-format advertising. Dunhua N. Rd.

2:19-2:20 p.m. - Street shooting. I'da preferred these in black & white. Most of these actually.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1:43 p.m. - Same subject as a few days before, I was taken by the removed rails, wondering what they were going to do with this area. The dying Living Mall is off to the left of this pic across Civic Blvd. a bit further down.

1:56 p.m. - Off Xinyi Rd.

4:35 p.m. - Plaza outside Songshan Eslite Spectrum.