A gallery to exhibit and store aerial photographs taken by documentary filmmaker Chi Po-lin (齊柏林) opens to the public today in New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水).
The Chi Po-lin Space (齊柏林空間) — located in a warehouse behind the Douglas Lapraik building on the Tamsui waterfront — is to house about 300,000 photographs taken by Chi, the Chi Po-lin Foundation said.
Chi’s family were joined at an opening ceremony on Monday by New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), former New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), film director Wu Nien-jen (吳念真) and company Taiwan Aerial Imaging chairwoman Wan Kuan-li (萬冠麗).
Photo courtesy of the Chi Po-lin Foundation
Wu — who narrated Chi’s 2013 documentary Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above (看見台灣) — said that hopefully the gallery will inspire others to take up Chi’s legacy and work for the protection of Taiwan’s environment.
Wu said his friends asked him why a memorial space was created for Chi, who made only one film.
He told them that the documentary’s impact on the public and the discussion it generated warranted a memorial space, Wu said.
Chi was killed while scouting locations for a follow-up documentary on June 10, 2017, in a helicopter crash that also claimed the lives of his assistant and the pilot.
The gallery’s first exhibition, titled “View Above Mountains,” features images taken from above Taiwan’s mountains using high-precision aerial photography equipment, the foundation said.
Chi’s son, Chi Ting-huan (齊廷洹), said he expects the photographs to move the visitors in the same way that his father was moved by seeing Taiwan’s mountains from the sky.
The exhibition would also feature the equipment his father used in his dark room, as well as pieces from the helicopter wreckage, Chi Ting-huan said.
Hopefully this will help people understand the complexities of aerial photography and the skills required, he said.
In the 20 years that Chi Po-lin photographed the Taipei Basin from the air, his route took him over the mouth of the Tamsui River on his return trip to Taipei, so the foundation chose a good location for the gallery, Chi Ting-huan said.
The exhibition runs until Jan. 1 next year, the foundation said.
The gallery would be open every day except for Tuesdays, it added.
Regular admission is NT$150, while visitors aged 65 or older, Tamsui residents and physically challenged people would pay NT$100, it said.
The foundation is also to run a culture and creativity center at the Tamsui Art Gallery, with food and beverages and an art gallery on the first floor, and a digital collection on the second floor.
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