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.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS