Landscapes and skylines

Landscapes and skylines

In the dusk of early summer days, the ’Light of the Sun’ spreads its magical power upon the busy city during rush-hour time. The whole urban life is bathed in sun rays. Regardless of the human activities, the busy traffic or the senseless height of the skyscrapers, the sun light is travelling from one corner of the city to another.
Light, you always travel hand in hand with the sounds of the city: sounds of cars speeding up, rustling sounds of the branches, busy paces of people commuting to work...With a touch of light, you empower every creature amd object on your way

Day after day, night after night, you come and go, again and again. Your routinely constant visit, however, is neglected. The public has ignored you; the city has...

Read more: Time and Numbers

Landscapes and skylines

Read more: Pescadores Archipelago / Conversation

Landscapes and skylines

The Shanghai World Expo is coming to an end… Six months and around seventy million visitors after its launch, what will remain of this mammoth happening?

The most enduring legacy will be the reshaping of Shanghai, the dense metro networks, innovative urban planning and international outlook. Truly, this has been a coming of age event, and its effects will be long term.

Besides this, the event has been mostly a “Fair”, a kind of festival. Chinese people have been coming from afar to get glimpses of world diversity or just to enjoy themselves. For sure, there have been many group visits fostered by work units and other institutions, but it was somehow moving to witness the zeal of individual visitors, quite a number of them...

Read more: After the Show

Landscapes and skylines

I arrived in Taiwan in 1992. Among all the things that struck me at that time, and which still speak to me in a most special way, were the richness, the strength and the variations of colours. The tropical light was shadowed by the clouds and haze, typical of the mountains and sea. To the sharp red of the temples or the intense green of the palms responded vague mixtures of grey, pale blue, pink, and orange shades on gas stations, signposts and commodity stores scattered along the roads. An oncoming tropical storm reflected off a helmet, when a motorbike stopped at a crossroad. Sunrays falling on a metal roof would suddenly strike a strident note against the misty vagueness of the hills. The language of townships and cities seemed to arise...

Read more: Taiwan Colour Code

Landscapes and skylines

A few hours from the towers of Shanghai, at the feet of the Yellow Mountains, lies a country of round, green hills and of narrow valleys-its name, Huizhou. Serpentine hillsides, mosaics of fields, well-trimmed tea tree bushes, and wet landscapes often filled with mist irresistibly evoke the magic of the ink-painted scenes from ancient China. This is where a brilliant culture flourished between the 16th and 18th centuries; the culture of the rich and literari merchant class who, under the Ming and the Qing dynasties, built private residencies, temples, porches, pavilions and bridges. These constructions still show today an art of living and an aesthetic, which is symbolically carved into the wood or the stone.

These are sample pictures...

Read more: Of Stones and Ink

Landscapes and skylines

Read more: Meeting Taipei

Landscapes and skylines

After capturing and presenting the atmosphere at night in the Huaguang community - one of the last mainlanders village left in central Taipei-, here are the voices and faces of its last residents. This old community retains the mood and traditions of old Times. Its inhabitants, civil servants from the ministry of Justice, mainlanders' families and others Taiwanese, have been living here for more than 50 years. By the end of 2012, this community will be demolished to give way to a financial center called "Taipei Wall Street". The residents are claiming for Justice and decent solutions.

Read more: Last Fight, Last Hope

Landscapes and skylines

The Huaguang community (華光社區) is one of the last mainlander villages left in central Taipei. This old community retains the mood and traditions of old times. Its inhabitants, civil servants from the Ministry of Justice, mainlander families and others Taiwanese, have been living here for more than 50 years. By the end of 2012, this community will be demolished to give way to a financial centre called "Taipei Wall Street". Inhabitants are calling for justice and decent relocation solutions. Through this documentary, a collection of nocturnal colors photography, the presence of the inhabitants is suggested but not shown outright, their anger and frustration is just acknowledged but not emphasized. The wall and windows, the alleys...

Read more: A World Falling Apart

Landscapes and skylines

Here is a collection of pictures by Hubert, who captures the atmosphere of Taiwan ‘s capital, working mainly in blank and white.
Crossroads’ zebras design the rhythm of a metropolis, creating continuities and breaks, allowing one to go from one space to another through a series of contrasts and transformations. In a city of 3 million inhabitants, crossroads appear no more like some meeting points but are some line-ruled paths with no ending. The only limits they seem to encounter are the surrounding buildings: they stand at the extremity of the road, lonely as the passer-by.
Some will prefer to cut the crossing like this old lady, little dark figure disquieting the severe geometry of the white lines. But where is going that old man...

Read more: Seeing Taipei from the crossroads

Landscapes and skylines

Located in the north west of Taipei city, Tianmu is a pleasant quarter: a quiet and calm environment quietly bisected by the Huangxi River with Yanming Mountain rising at the back. Tianmu has become one of the favourite places for foreigners to live in Taipei and is well known as a pleasant place for a stroll. In Chinese ‘tian’ means ‘sky’ and ‘mu’ means ‘mother’ but I would say that more so than the sky, it is Mother Nature who has given Tianmu most of its beauty. Now development plans threaten to destroy much of this.

I have been informed by a resident of Tianmu that a huge real estate project is to replace the green space along the river. This green part of Tianmu, called ‘the Jungle’ by some residents...

Read more: Tianmu’s ‘Jungle’ is in danger

Landscapes and skylines

The park authorities in Taipei County pride themselves on being creative with park creation and this is causing a consciousness about beauty in their own parks amongst the residents all around Taipei County. One new idea is shaping the growth of flowers based on the patterns on ancient turtle bone characters...

Read more: Park creativity in Taipei County

Landscapes and skylines

Read more: Water and Mountains Sceneries