By MOOK Travel Life Network, reported and compiled by Chen Guan-xin
At over 83 years of age, Ke Si-jie completed his latest series “Eden Paradise” last year during a trip to Australia. The series captures the genuine familial affection or romantic love between lovers as nude figures interact with nature. It will be unveiled for the first time from tomorrow (the 17th) to February 17, 2013, at the “Ke Si-jie’s Fantastic Journey Photography Exhibition” held at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. This photography retrospective features around 150 classic and recent works by Ke Si-jie, organized under five thematic sections: Heartscapes, Human Body, Other Lands/Home, Classic Series, and Portrait Series. It also includes his renowned “dye-transfer” photography works since the 1980s, which established him alongside four American masters—Burt Glinn, Ernst Haas, Pete Turner, and Barbara Wrubel—as a leading figure in color photography.
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Holding his first solo exhibition in Kaohsiung, Ke Si-jie will once again present a photography exhibition at the KMFA tomorrow (the 17th). (Photo provided by MOOK Editorial Department)
In this exhibition at the KMFA, the “Heartscape” series showcases the style Ke Si-jie developed during his wandering years in 1979. Through seemingly minimalist and restrained compositions, the works reveal the artist’s delicate and perceptive emotional resonance. Whether it’s endless deserts, common scenes like slanting sunlight, incense burners, or even a street lamp, they ultimately transform into poetic imagery. Moreover, from photographing Taiwan’s first professional female nude model Lin Si-duan in the 1960s to shooting American dancers and models in the 1970s—from fashion photography to the pursuit of pure aesthetics—last year, at 82, Ke Si-jie resolutely traveled to Australia to create the alternative human body aesthetic series “Eden Paradise.” It depicts nude figures expressing familial affection in nature or romantic love between lovers, giving Ke Si-jie a new understanding of the human body and nature. He said, “The beauty of the human body isn’t singular. Women who have given birth may have wider hips and thicker waists, representing different life stages—and that’s also a kind of beauty. That’s what I want to capture now. Only by appreciating diverse forms of beauty can the heart grow broader.”
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Ke Si-jie’s photography exhibition at the KMFA features about 150 works, organized under themes such as Heartscape, Human Body, Other Lands/Home, Classic Series, and Portrait Series. (Photo provided by MOOK Editorial Department)
In the Classic Series, his dye-transfer photography works not only significantly elevated the depth of color photography but also cemented Ke Si-jie’s irreplaceable status in the photography circles of the United States and France. The French art and culture publisher Cercle de Art, in its book “On Ke Si-jie,” once remarked, “While the professional photography circles in Europe and America were still debating the artistry of black-and-white photography in the 1980s, Ke Si-jie had already proven that the era of color photography had arrived.” In portrait photography, Ke Si-jie pioneered thematic portrait series in Taiwan during the 1960s. Notably, his 1966 outdoor shoot of modern dance for Mr. and Mrs. Huang Zhong-liang marked the first instance of photographing a dance troupe outdoors in Taiwan.
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