Film Photography // Hometown (1): Between Alleys

"Between the Alleys" was originally the name of the theme I made for my photographic works when I was a student. Since I could listen to music in the darkroom at school, I would go around my house with a film machine every weekend. Go, there is no specific theme, I shoot everything I see and feel it. I first photographed light and shadow, corners, dense wires, cats, and later I photographed tables and chairs, crowds, half-length portraits, and traces of exchanges. In that city, I didn't explore too many places that I've been to but I'm not familiar with. There are all kinds of strange video stories to tell in the alleys that I used to go around since I was a child.

My home is Lane 77. There is an alley every 70 or 50 meters in that area. It is a checkerboard interlaced between the two small li. It used to be a community of civil servants as the main salaried class. , gradually becoming a community with retired civil servants as the main residents. Next door is Lane 67, and next door are Lane 55, Lane 39, and Lane 17, and there are Lane 1 and Lane 7 vertically. There is a small community at the bottom of Lane 17. There is a small pond in the community, where many big carp are raised. As a primary school student, I love to watch fish independently. When I was in elementary school, these alleys surrounded the small world I explored after school. In college, these alleys were the basis for my understanding of the wider world through photography.

When I was young, especially between elementary school and university, when I liked to pretend to be cool and didn’t know how to start a conversation with strangers, the last thing I wanted to meet on the way home from school was a group of old people gathered in the arcade space in the alley. Because my grandma, who lives with me, is also inside.

When I was a teenager, I thought it was a very awkward thing to say hello to her. We seldom had conversations at home, and we never had a chat. At least I don't remember anything. There has always been an embarrassment between strangers and relatives. .

Since she moved into our house when I was in kindergarten, I learned basic Taiwanese, but no more because we hardly spoke. Seventy or eighty percent of it should be a routine call to action. Before eating, say, "Rice is cooked." Walkman) bring it to me." I don't know any other animals and plants that may be encountered in life, and how to chat with others in Taiwanese in long sentences. She doesn't say it, and I don't ask. Before Mammy, I never thought that someone should initiate the conversation with Mammy.

But in the alley, she would always recognize me and tell other old people that her granddaughter was going home. I don't need to turn my head, I have seen a group of strangers and grandma looking at me from a distance, should I say hello? What to say? There is a kind of pressure that I don't want to ignore and I don't know how to face.

Of course, after she was hospitalized, I didn't meet her in the alley, but at the nursing home, accompany her to eat meals, and was sent to take her to the outpatient clinic next door. There are some reasons for getting in touch with grandma, and it is no longer so awkward. She eventually passed away. It was six or seven years later when I held a camera and met a group of old people again. In the past, the picture of grandma's hands folded on the upright umbrella handle, and other old men with electric hair looking at me, reappeared, but the group of old grandma no longer appeared in the corner of the alley where they gathered at that time. I gave myself the opportunity to create a negative to record another group of alley grandmas with the shadows of grandma in the past.

After walking a few steps and turning around an alley corner, there is another grandma and her exclusive rattan chair outside the door. Her little grandchild used to be my playmate in elementary school, and one has not completely disappeared in my memory. Figure, but the name has disappeared, vaguely remember being pulled in by a playmate to go to the toilet. Her house seemed to be much quieter, with only one dog to accompany, and no other human voices. In the black and white photos, it was so quiet that no sound could be heard.

People say break up, but every time an item becomes inseparable in my hands. My family in Taiwan has a large box of negatives, paper photos, and exhibition works that I have accumulated since I learned traditional photography in the darkroom. These black and white photos are even more lost, neither kept nor kept. I used to think carefully about the composition or the moment I was attracted by the picture. The shutter captures all kinds of unintuitive or intuitive images, which are far deeper in memory than today's digital photography.

These grandmas look at the moment of the camera, do not know what they are thinking? Now I should be able to chat casually, but I was still a little jerky when dealing with people. At most, I just nodded, turned around and took another picture. It is 2020 now, and this batch of photos was taken in 2006-2007, 13 years ago.