Article by MOOK Travel Life Network, compiled and reported by Chen Guan-xin
At over 83 years old, Ke Si-jie completed his latest series “Eden” last year during a trip to Australia. The work captures the genuine familial affection or romantic love of nude figures in nature. The series will be unveiled for the first time from tomorrow (the 17th) to February 17, 2013, at the “Ke Si-jie’s Magical Journey Photography Exhibition” held at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. This retrospective photography exhibition includes approximately 150 of Ke Si-jie’s classic and recent works, organized around five thematic sections: Heartscapes, Human Body, Other Lands/Home, Classic Series, and Portrait Series. It also features his renowned “dye-transfer” photography works since the 1980s, which have earned him recognition alongside four American masters—Burt Glinn, Ernst Haas, Pete Turner, and Barbara Wrubel—as a leading figure in color photography.
Holding his first solo exhibition in Kaohsiung, Ke Si-jie will once again showcase his photography at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts tomorrow (the 17th). (Image provided by MOOK Editorial Department)
In this exhibition at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Ke Si-jie’s “Heartscape” series reflects the style he developed during his wandering years in 1979. Through seemingly minimalist and restrained compositions, the works reveal the delicate and sensitive emotions of the artist. Whether it’s a vast desert, a common sunset, an incense burner, or even a streetlamp, they all transform into poetic imagery. Additionally, from photographing Taiwan’s first professional female nude model Lin Si-duan in the 1960s to capturing American dancers and models in the 1970s—from fashion photography to pure aesthetic exploration—last year, at the age of 82, Ke Si-jie resolutely traveled to Australia to create the alternative human body aesthetic series “Eden.” The series showcases the genuine familial affection or romantic love of nude figures in nature, giving Ke Si-jie a new understanding of the human body and nature. He said, “The beauty of the human body is not singular. Women who have given birth may have wider hips and thicker waists, representing different stages of life, which is also a form of beauty. That’s what I want to capture now. Only by appreciating different kinds of beauty can the heart expand.”
Ke Si-jie’s photography exhibition at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts features about 150 works, organized into themes such as Heartscape, Human Body, Other Lands/Home, Classic Series, and Portrait Series. (Image 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 established 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 the book “On Ke Si-jie,” once commented: “While 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 photography in Taiwan by shooting subjects in series format starting in the 1960s. Notably, his 1966 modern dance photography for Mr. and Mrs. Huang Zhong-liang was the first instance of photographing a dance troupe outdoors.
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