My wife and I are going to the US tomorrow for a few weeks to visit my family and travel around. I got a new camera to document the trip: a Fujifilm Instax 300 Wide. It’s a big boxy thing that takes Instax wide film, and spits out a nice crispy image right after you press the button. The body of the camera itself has to be big enough to house the photos, and so it’s about the size of a half of a loaf of bread.
I thought it would be fun for travel, being able to give physical pictures for family members to put on their refrigerator doors and whatnot. Just to test it out, I’ve done some shooting around Taipei, though the weather has been awful the last two days leading to some poorly exposed photos.
I took this one over at 奉天宮 Feng Tian Temple near my house. You can’t really turn off the flash on this type of camera, so there is a distinct terror when the whole temple is filled with blue light for a fraction of a second and everyone turns to see you carrying this inconspicuous box, now loudly whirring out the exposure.
This photo is just inside the front gate, past the 3 meter tall incense burner. I assume the statues are of Mazu or Guanyu, but of course I scurried out the door after taking my picture before figuring out for certain. This whole room is brightly lit, the far wall is gold colored. Candles flicker and incense smoke fills the air. A large table is covered in offerings of food, and wide wooden pillars break up any line of sight, covered in yellow writing. There are three cushions for kneeling and praying directly opposite the statuary. I stood behind the central cushion, flanked symmetrically on either side by the wooden pillars, kneeled on the ground, and got this shot.
It’s exactly how you’re supposed to look at this piece of architecture and at these gods, prostrate, as they tower before you on elevated thrones.
This isn’t a particularly profound thought, I know, more just the beginning of a new thought that I will carry around for a few days and work through. Instantly an example came into my head.
I’ve never been to North Korea, but I know a guy that has (and he liked it so much, he went twice). You always hear in North Korea, you can’t take pictures of the backsides of statues. I don’t know, and for the sake of this point, don’t particularly care whether or not that is true. Most people wouldn’t spare a thought for, let alone take a picture of the backside of the statue without such a rule being in place. It’s just not how we’re supposed to look at statues.
What else do I not consider from other perspectives? Why don’t I look at them from those perspectives? Am I somehow, physically or otherwise, not given access to those vantages? Am I lacking in creativity? What can I do to peek behind the curtain?
I have to finish packing, and I’ll keep taking pictures with this new camera. Some of the pictures I am going to document strictly, from the preferred points of view, whatever subject I am looking at. Other times, I hope to venture out a little bit from the most common perspective.
Stuff Cam Wrote 