The National Center of Photography and Images (NCPI) is presenting an online gallery featuring photographs taken by a French military officer during his visit to Taiwan over a century ago, when the nation was known as Formosa and under Japanese rule.
The gallery titled “Memories from Formosa and the Pescadores Islands” showcases photographs taken by Claude de Rarecourt de la Vallee, who was a lieutenant colonel and the count of Pimodan.
Born in 1859, the French nobleman was a military attache with the French embassy in Tokyo during the 19th century and was invited by Japanese general Kawakami Soroku to tour Taiwan and the outlying Penghu islands in 1896, one year after they were ceded to the Empire of Japan by the Qing Dynasty.
Photo courtesy of the National Center of Photography and Images via CNA
After arriving at the Port of Keelung, he visited several other areas, including present-day Taipei, Hsinchu, Taichung, Changhua, Yunlin, Chiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Magong City in Penghu.
Accompanied by his Japanese hosts during the trip, he was moved by the scenes of ordinary people going about their daily lives, such as farmers toiling in the fields with their buffalo, as well as activities at traditional buildings and temples.
The count of Pimodan later wrote a memoir about his trip and produced an album that included 54 photos made with the collotype technique, images that he gifted to those who hosted him, the NCPI said.
Collotype is a photographic printing process invented in 1855 to print images in a wide variety of tones without the need for halftone screens. The majority of collotypes were produced between the 1870s and the 1920s.
The national center also said that after visiting Taiwan, he also visited other regions in Southeast Asia to observe how Japan, France and Britain ruled their colonies.
The online gallery can be viewed at https://bit.ly/3TSwX3U.
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