藝術家 鄭亭亭 評論 Review from Artist Cheng Ting Ting

Written by artist Cheng Ting Ting
Yi-Hsuan Lee’s project Music, Rolleiflex and silver print use the most traditional way in photography: analog and silver hand prints, to explore the music and culture scenes in contemporary Taiwan. 

As the title revealed, the images in the exhibition are photographed by the Rolleiflex and printed by the artist herself in a darkroom. The relatively intimate way of printing has added the extra personal touch to the project, which can be traced to the dust shown on the surface. At the same time, Lee has created a nostalgia atmosphere; the camera and the darkroom are like a time machine, bringing the present back to the past, triggering the viewers’ curiosity toward the age of the photographs. In the era of digitalization, the tribute to the past from the new generation is more precious.

As a Taiwanese cultural worker, Lee photographed the back stage and private life of the indie musicians, discovering the other side of the story we don’t usually see on the stage, describing the contemporary music industry in Taiwan in a very pure and honest perspective. The clean and static images here show the quiet female gaze without any stereotypical, exaggerated language and rhetoric.