Chien-Chi Chang has always been fascinated by the human conditions of
alienation and connection. Both are in evidence in his signature work,
The Chain, which is a collection of portraits made of inmates in a mental
asylum in Taiwan. The subjects are people who have had their bonds to
the rest of society - family, community - severed. And yet, as part of
their treatment, they are chained to one another, physically linked in
pairs throughout their days and only unlocked to sleep. These powerful
photographs, nearly life size, have been exhibited at the Taipei Fine
Arts Museum (2001), La Biennale di Venezia (2001), and the Bienal de Sao
Paolo (2002).
Less visible bonds were the subject of another project: A jaundiced look
at the ceremony surrounding the union of two people. When his parents
began pressuring him to marry, Chang responded by making pictures at weddings
in Taiwan. The images are hardly festive, rather emphasizing alienated
grooms and lonely brides. They have been collected in the book, "I
do I do I do."
This meditation on the nature of the ties that bind a person to others
and to society is a natural outgrowth of Chang's own experience of the
divided life of an immigrant. The son of working people in central Taiwan,
he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Soochow University in Taiwan
in 1984 and a Master of Science degree at Indiana University in 1990.
He then became a staff photographer at The Seattle Times (1991-1993) and
The Baltimore Sun (1994-1995).
Over the past decade, he has worked in New York's Chinatown, documenting
the lives of immigrants there. These pictures of illegal aliens stranded
on an island within an island have appeared in National Geographic magazine,
as well as The New Yorker, Time and German Geo. The series earned Chang
first place in the category "Daily Life Story" from World Press Photo
in Holland in 1999.
That same year, Chang won a grant from the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund
for humanistic photography and was awarded the Visa d'Or in magazine photography
in Perpignan, France. He was named the Missouri/NPPA 1999 Magazine Photographer
of the Year in the U.S.
Chien-Chi Chang is a member of Magnum Photos. He resides in Taipei and
in New York City and is currently working on a book project about Taiwan.
The Chain 1998 [view images]