This photo book collects Chiwai Cheang's recent images taken in Taiwan, without intentional sensationalism or excessive romanticism. There is only a person who has exhausted all ideas but is still persistent in documenting, repeatedly practicing how to bid farewell to an island, and how to quietly linger, between familiarity and estrangement.
Returning briefly each year, he is like both a traveler and a transient visitor, repeating his routine in the same Taipei coffee shop: working, observing, pressing the shutter. Photography becomes proof of "I was here," and at the same time, self-deception—editing repetitive scenes into exclusive memories, amplifying subtle interactions with the place, just to persuade the reader, and himself: all of this is neither cheap nor vulgar.
