主編語

Abstract

The world of elite culture tends to view photography as a form of contemporary visual art, but ordinary society has long viewed it as an art form that is highly accessible and easy to do. Although in Taiwan there have been several scholars and writers, both inside and outside academia, who have devoted themselves tirelessly to the history of photography, we have seen a relative scarcity of written works on the history of Taiwanese photography that are comprehensive and collective and possess a certain historical perspective or critical outlook. More research and writing in this field is clearly needed. The special theme of this edition, "The Age of Photography: Japanese Colonial History and Taiwan Photography," considers photography as archive and historical data. By investigating the different functions of photographic archives and the different ways in which they are used, we attempt to systematically understand the political, social and cultural effects of photography under Japanese colonial rule.