Inside a cramped studio, Jane Chen pulled a mask from her face, breathed in deeply and pressed a remote camera shutter for an art project documenting how Taiwan has coped with COVID-19.
“I want to tell everyone to treasure their every breath of fresh air,” the 23-year-old hospitality student told reporters after the photo shoot.
Taiwan was one of the first places struck by the pandemic when it burst out of central China late last year.
Photo: AFP / Hsu Tsun-hsu
The nation has been hailed as an example of how to stop the virus in its tracks, with just seven deaths and 467 cases.
However, while it has avoided the lockdowns seen elsewhere, everyday life has been transformed — in particular by the near-universal adoption of masks.
That was something British documentary photographer Naomi Goddard, who settled in Taiwan a year ago, wanted to explore.
So she invited friends and strangers alike to take portraits of themselves in masks, accompanied by a handwritten note documenting their experiences.
“The virus is obviously going to be an important part of our history, so I felt compelled to document it in some way,” Goddard told reporters at her studio in downtown Taipei.
Pilates instructor Tina Liu, 25, came to the studio alongside her boyfriend Hugo Lin. The pair faced each other and embraced as the flash flared.
The first month of the outbreak felt like an apocalypse, Liu said, recalling the panic-buying and anxious lines for masks.
“Taiwan is doing better than most now, but it seems like the end of the world in some countries,” she added.
Like millions worldwide, Liu and her boyfriend lost their jobs during the pandemic.
“Everything all came so suddenly, like the virus, it derailed our lives,” Liu added. “But we strived and our relationship is actually better.”
Notes left by other subjects revealed how the virus has upended lives, even in a place left relatively unscathed by the pandemic.
Megan, a tattooed hairdresser, detailed how she opened a new shop in January only to see business dry up.
“You never know what life would throw at you,” she wrote. “I still consider myself lucky, at least my shop is open and running.”
Dressed in his uniform, airline pilot Kevin wrote how he now has to spend weeks in quarantine each time he flies to a new country and when he returns home.
“I can’t say that it’s been easy for myself or my family to be apart so much,” he wrote. “But this is our reality now.”
Goddard shot her own portrait for the project, sitting naked on top of a ladder she had used to get her studio up and running, a gas mask over her face.
Her nudity, she said, portrayed the vulnerable feeling the virus had left her with.
She said the pandemic has exposed which countries were ready for the challenge.
“It’s the first time in a very long period where you can kind of compare country by country, side by side, how the governments are operating in basically the exact same situation,” she said.
Her family in the UK were worried when the virus first emerged because of Taiwan’s proximity to China.
Now she feels lucky to be where she is.
“We’re so glad to be here. Our lives, compared to back home, haven’t changed at all,” she said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), spokeswoman Yang Chih-yu (楊智伃) and Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) would be summoned by police for questioning for leading an illegal assembly on Thursday evening last week, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said today. The three KMT officials led an assembly outside the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office, a restricted area where public assembly is not allowed, protesting the questioning of several KMT staff and searches of KMT headquarters and offices in a recall petition forgery case. Chu, Yang and Hsieh are all suspected of contravening the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) by holding
PRAISE: Japanese visitor Takashi Kubota said the Taiwanese temple architecture images showcased in the AI Art Gallery were the most impressive displays he saw Taiwan does not have an official pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, because of its diplomatic predicament, but the government-backed Tech World pavilion is drawing interest with its unique recreations of works by Taiwanese artists. The pavilion features an artificial intelligence (AI)-based art gallery showcasing works of famous Taiwanese artists from the Japanese colonial period using innovative technologies. Among its main simulated displays are Eastern gouache paintings by Chen Chin (陳進), Lin Yu-shan (林玉山) and Kuo Hsueh-hu (郭雪湖), who were the three young Taiwanese painters selected for the East Asian Painting exhibition in 1927. Gouache is a water-based
Taiwan would welcome the return of Honduras as a diplomatic ally if its next president decides to make such a move, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. “Of course, we would welcome Honduras if they want to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan after their elections,” Lin said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, when asked to comment on statements made by two of the three Honduran presidential candidates during the presidential campaign in the Central American country. Taiwan is paying close attention to the region as a whole in the wake of a
OFF-TARGET: More than 30,000 participants were expected to take part in the Games next month, but only 6,550 foreign and 19,400 Taiwanese athletes have registered Taipei city councilors yesterday blasted the organizers of next month’s World Masters Games over sudden timetable and venue changes, which they said have caused thousands of participants to back out of the international sporting event, among other organizational issues. They also cited visa delays and political interference by China as reasons many foreign athletes are requesting refunds for the event, to be held from May 17 to 30. Jointly organized by the Taipei and New Taipei City governments, the games have been rocked by numerous controversies since preparations began in 2020. Taipei City Councilor Lin Yen-feng (林延鳳) said yesterday that new measures by