Positive: Ephemeral Phenomenon
translated from the chapter in “Above Flames” ：「正片：稍縱即逝的現象」
Cameras, once large and cumbersome boxes in the home that required porters to carry photography equipment, gradually transformed into essential household tools — a subtle historical shift. In 1888, Kodak introduced the first personal handheld camera, the “Kodak #1,” invented by George Eastman. From that moment, the slogan “Kodak as you go” became a reality, and the camera could accompany you wherever you went — on a walk, on a tram, or hiking. The advent of handheld cameras made Alfred Stieglitz, a photographer who was pushing for photography to be recognized as a new art form at the time, uneasy. He criticized these cameras as merely allowing people to take “hasty photographic notes” while traveling. Moreover, with everyone able to take photos, didn’t that prove the argument that photography was just “mechanical creation,” lacking artistic merit?
As a result, Stieglitz and other photographers resisted the “age of handheld cameras.” They deliberately adopted printing techniques that were difficult for the average person to use, such as gum bichromate prints and platinum prints, to assert their status as craftsmen. Originally working at the prestigious Camera Notes, Stieglitz left in 1902 and gathered a group of excellent photographers, including Edward Steichen, who would later become a photography master, and Gertrude Käsebier, known as the mother of modern photography. They formed the “Photo-Secession” movement and founded the magazine Camera Work, promoting the “Pictorialism” movement in America.
Pictorialism aimed to make photography exhibit aesthetics, composition, and atmosphere akin to painting. However, this approach unexpectedly diminished the status of photography, as it seemed to be subordinate to painting. Stieglitz soon realized this limitation. In 1917, influenced by European humanist thought and the photographer Paul Strand, he concluded that if an image lacked human depth, no matter how much it resembled a painting, it was still just a beautifully crafted picture. Stieglitz personally dissolved the “Photo-Secession” group, distributed Camera Work to museums and libraries, then decisively burned the remaining stock, embarking on a search for his own new photographic style.
That same year, coincidentally, was also the first peak of camera mass production in photography history. Why was 1917 such a critical year for camera production? One explanation is that the largest supplier of affordable cameras at the time, the United States, had decided to join the war. As large numbers of young men were about to head to the battlefield, every family wanted to buy a camera to take memorable photos of those who were leaving for war, or to take photos of family members or lovers, so they could carry them to the front. The photos taken that year were perhaps some of the most heartbreaking in history. For many, memories of lovers and family members were preserved in wallet-sized photos or in picture frames on the mantle. But for families who lost loved ones to the war, those “amateur” handheld cameras at least helped capture fleeting, final images of their kin.
War never truly leaves. Even now, there is the smoke of battle not far away. Imagine, if we were to plaster all the photos of people permanently lost to war on a wall, what kind of sight would that be?
The living people in those photos, sooner or later, will all become “the deceased.” As Susan Sontag said, ever since the invention of the camera in 1839, photography has always accompanied death.
Edward Sheriff Curtis, the first American photographer to extensively photograph Native Americans — given the Native American name “Pazola Washte” (meaning “Pretty Butte”) — began his journey in 1896, carrying his heavy 14x17-inch camera through the tribes of the American West and Canada. He used glass plates to independently take tens of thousands of photographs, devoting over 30 years of his youth, physical strength, and money to complete the monumental 20-volume work The North American Indian. In his early photographs, Apache, Navajo, and Inuit people were still dressed in traditional clothing, living in the wilderness, exuding a sense of pride and dignity. However, by 1927, a Comanche chief named Wilbur Peebo appeared in a photograph wearing a shirt and tie, and we realized that the photos depicted not only the decline of individuals but also the demise of entire tribes and cultures.
Curtis became impoverished in his quest to complete this ethnographic photography project and remained so until his death, but his spirit and consciousness were far from poor. He not only bore witness to the final days of the most formidable tribes of the American continent but also to the moment when the largest herd of hoofed bison in North America still thundered across the plains. Fragments of his photographic notes reveal that the photographer’s true sense of fulfillment may lie in the process of pursuit. He wrote about sitting beside a beautiful stream in an Apache forest, listening to “countless birds singing their songs of life and love. Within arm’s reach lay a tree that had been knocked down by a beaver the previous night. The beaver had first ventured into the bright area, surveyed its surroundings, and then returned. A flock of sorrowful doves flew to the water’s edge, gracefully drinking to quench their thirst, and then flapped their wings and flew away.”
Such simple, beautiful, and melancholic imagery leads me to imagine: could those flapping wings belong to the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) that once migrated in flocks stretching over 500 kilometers and darkening the skies, with the last individual becoming extinct in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo?
French film critic Christian Metz once offered a multi-layered view on the relationship between photography and death. He argued that photography and death are connected in three ways. First, we always keep photographs of the deceased as a form of remembrance. Second, all the moments captured in an image are gone forever, as if dead — throughout our lives, we are constantly bidding farewell to the times recorded in photos. The third point is that photographs are tools that entice us into another world, into another space. Through that thin, flat surface, we return to the space where the deceased once existed — their scent, their voice, their steps. It is as if we leave the living world and enter the world of the dead.
I often look at photographs of the African savannah, the Antarctic ice fields, or the forests, oceans, and streams of the island we live on, and I find myself immersed in a profound and subtle emotion. I imagine that in those moments in time, perhaps certain forms of life still coexist with us. For example, the most legendary creature on this island — the clouded leopard.
The character Abong Karus in the works of the novelist Wu He is based on a real person, the Rukai writer Aweny Karusang. Aweny Karusang was born in the Clouded Leopard Tribe of Kuchapongone. According to legend, this tribe originally lived in a place called Shilcipalhichi, but after conflicts with other tribes, they crossed the Central Mountain Range and temporarily settled in Romingan. When the tribal leader Bularudaan and his brother brought a clouded leopard to Old Haocha, the leopard licked the water from the stream and refused to move on. The older brother noticed this unusual behavior and took it as a sign that their people were meant to settle there, so he sent his brother back to Shilcipalhichi to bring the entire family to migrate. This is what we now call Old Haocha, and the Rukai people of this tribe refer to themselves as the descendants of the clouded leopard. The clouded leopard is both their mystical hunting companion and a deity, which is why the tribe does not kill clouded leopards or wear their skins.
This legend makes us believe that the mountainous area of Old Haocha, or the southern Central Mountain Range where the Rukai people first lived, was once a habitat for clouded leopards. However, the Rukai people had no cameras, and those who truly saw clouded leopards have since passed away. Through language, all we can retain is the shadow of this beautiful beast’s shadow. In fact, regarding the clouded leopard, all we have is a specimen left from the Japanese colonial period, a dead juvenile found in a trap, a few “suspected” paw prints, and two anthropological photos from around 1900 — perhaps of a young Rukai person wearing a rare clouded leopard fur vest.
If we go back a bit further in time, around 1860, Robert Swinhoe, the British vice-consul stationed in Taiwan, became fascinated with the island’s unique forests and wildlife, which were so different from those in England. He often trekked through the mountains, collecting specimens and naming creatures he had never seen before, as if writing a wilderness Bible for the island. In 1862, he published a highly significant ecological report titled On the Mammals of the Island of Formosa, in which he mentioned Formosan macaques, Formosan black bears, Formosan wildcats, clouded leopards, and civets. The term “clouded leopard,” with its dreamlike connotation, made its first appearance, and later it would be preceded by the name Formosa. Swinhoe never took a photograph of a clouded leopard, nor did he leave a specimen. Was the clouded leopard he recorded something he saw with his own eyes, or was it merely hearsay? No one knows.
It seems that no one has definitively seen a “living” clouded leopard since then. As photographic technology has advanced, images of mysterious creatures such as the Formosan black bear and the Formosan wildcat have been captured, but not a single clouded leopard. Many people firmly believe that the clouded leopard still roams the mountains, moving mysteriously through the forests along Taiwan’s backbone, yet there remains no trace. After the turn of the millennium, Professor Pei Jiaqi of Pingtung University of Science and Technology and Dr. Liu Jiannan from the Biodiversity Research Center at Academia Sinica launched a Taiwan-U.S. collaborative project called the “Clouded Leopard Tracking Project.” They set up over 1,200 camera traps and more than 200 scent traps, hoping to find even just a bit of hair, a footprint, some scat… or, oh, how wonderful it would be to have a photograph — capturing the gaze of the island’s apex predator, a creature that combines lethality and strength, a miracle of creation as solid as a mountain and as ethereal as a cloud. Its sword-like tail quivers with excitement, lying patiently in ambush like a stone in the darkness, waiting for a muntjac or sambar deer to pass by, pouncing on its prey with dreamlike precision. How wonderful it would be to have a photograph. But thirteen years have passed, and the clouded leopard’s shadow remains hidden in the night.
For wildlife photographers, the act of “capturing” animals with camera traps or taking (or shooting) images of rare and beautiful creatures is a mission that remains a dream, even in the face of extreme hardship, physical pain, or even at the cost of one’s life. Ansel Adams, a master of landscape photography, once said that he took photographs because he was fascinated by “found objects.” I particularly love this sentiment because often a photograph’s appearance is both accidental and fated. It’s a result of the destiny of the animal or environment being photographed, as well as the fate of the photographer.
In its early days, National Geographic was primarily a magazine focused on landscapes. The editorial policy at the time was that photos must present “the world and everything in it,” and the publication must steer clear of politics, conflict, and subjectivity. As photographic technology advanced, readers became increasingly captivated by the magazine’s evolving narrative strategy, which focused on images, showcasing “the world and everything in it.” Naturally, this had to include the living creatures that brought the landscape to life.
To most people, a Bengal tiger is just a Bengal tiger, and a wide-tailed swallowtail butterfly is just a butterfly. They are not seen as unique individuals. The fundamental difference between photographs of people and photographs of animals is that animals usually only have species names, while humans have personal names. Usually, only pets that live with humans are anthropomorphized or individualized enough to be given personal names, sometimes even with gender. We might ask when looking at a friend’s cat photo, “What’s its name?” But we wouldn’t ask a wild bird in nature for its individual name.
However, thanks to the accumulation of photographs and the development of DNA technology, recent biological research has been able to identify individuals that appear repeatedly in images. Endangered Sumatran rhinos, long-tracked polar bears, and bonobos with intelligence comparable to that of elementary school children are sometimes given names by compassionate scientists. Once named, we can learn about their family groups and infer their unique personalities and nicknames based on their appearance. These names often come with stories of interactions between scientists and the animals. Sometimes I think, at least we called the last passenger pigeon that died in the Cincinnati Zoo “Martha” rather than simply referring to her as “the last passenger pigeon.” I believe there’s a significant emotional difference in that.
In Taiwan, the Hualien Black Current Ocean Educational Foundation’s dolphin identification project uses the dorsal fins and body characteristics of dolphins to identify and name them. They allow the public to donate and “name” these dolphins. This activity not only supports dolphin identification research but also gives the dolphins names. Having a name creates a subtle emotional connection between the photographer, the image, and the subject being photographed. When the individual associated with that name dies, the sorrow we feel seems deeper than if we were simply mourning the loss of an unnamed animal.
As Metz said, the third meaning of photography’s connection to death lies in how a photograph seems to provide a space that does not belong to the present moment, yet allows the viewer to enter. The photographer was, of course, present at the scene, and for them, the photograph calls upon memories. The viewer, however, may or may not have been to the same place, may or may not have had similar experiences of observation, but at that moment, through a beautiful photograph, they are transported into misty forests, ice fields, mountain winds, dreams of flying freely in the sky, or diving deep into the ocean without oxygen tanks. It is also a space where polar bears on the verge of extinction or Sumatran rhinos seem to still be beautifully alive. The irony is that, even as the world’s last polar bears take their final breaths and the Arctic ice fields may disappear within the next twenty years, we possess millions upon millions of replicated images of polar bears thanks to the advancement of photography. Knut, who was once so highly adored and eventually died a melancholic death at the Berlin Zoo, has millions of versions of himself living in children’s rooms across the world. His image appears in advertisements promoting energy conservation. But within these photos, there is no sense of reverence for death, only a superficial reminder of global warming — as casual as a service attendant reminding you to watch your step in an elevator.
The number and variety of animal photos we have continues to increase, while the number and variety of living species continues to decline. It’s impossible to deny that this reflects a real and profound fading of the spirit. The crescent nailtail wallaby, laughing owl, black-breasted honeyeater, dodo, Eskimo curlew, scimitar oryx, Caspian tiger, and Xerces blue butterfly — if we were to digitally edit a photo, or weave one in our minds, that included all extinct animals and the landscapes they depended on, it would be an incredibly beautiful and absolutely sorrowful image. Their names could be written as a poem. Just as American families bought cameras to photograph their children before they went off to war, wildlife photographers continually upgrade their equipment to capture rare animals under the pressure of extinction. Photography makes it seem as though the subjects are still “inhabiting” the images. When we realize a particular photograph is the “last sighting” of an animal, it becomes especially poignant. It’s as if these animals are still alive in the photos, though no longer present on Earth. In that moment, the beings in those photos still exhibit unparalleled vitality, as if death is as distant as the stars in a distant constellation, and their final struggle doesn’t seem to exist. In some “shallow depth of field” photos, we might even be tempted to believe that the world is still hazy and tranquil, like a “beautiful bokeh.”
Stieglitz once said, “Hidden beneath everything is the law of nature, and within this law of nature lies humanity’s hope.” The rare, or even extinct, animals and their impressions and images — preserved through layers of memory and technology — sometimes make this hope feel so close, and at other times, so fleeting.
