VOP Issue 36: Gospel Visuality: The Missionary Images Issue

In this issue, we delve into the enormous volume of images produced by Western missionaries, which are an undeniable part of Taiwan and East Asian visual experiences. We analyze their production process, cultural politics, and their comprehensive impact on modern bodies and perception.

In the special feature, Chen Wei-chih explores how Western missionaries in Taiwan, from George MacKay to William Campbell, Thomas Barclay, and James Laidlaw Maxwell, indirectly or directly participated in early photography activities in Taiwan since the mid-19th century. Their testimonial images of missionary work then became the widely reproduced historical landscape of Taiwan today. Ho Wei-wei examines the large number of photographs, film reels, albums, and atlases produced by American missionaries who were forced to leave China after the Chinese Civil War. From prohibition to reshaping, he unveils a twisted trajectory of missionary visual modernity in East Asia in the early 20th century. Wu Yi-jui visits the collection of photographs of Taiwan from the Japanese colonial period owned by the family of British medical missionary Dr. David Landsborough. He analyzes the representation and circulation of different cultures and "the other" in early missionary images, and the critical role of photographs and images in solidifying the classic narrative of medical missions, revealing the complex co-construction relationship between medicine, religion, and images. Huang Nai-chi discusses how Kuangchi Program Service, founded by Jesuit missionaries in Taiwan, introduced American communication technologies in the mid-20th century and shaped the early development of Taiwan's radio and television programs, animation, and filmmaking. By tracing declassified archives, Lee Wei-yi investigates why Father Léon P. S. F. Floch's photography album "The Face of Taiwan," published in 1959, and his subsequent large-scale solo photography exhibition at the American Cultural Center in Taipei, were able to take place during the high-pressure martial law period, becoming a representative work of missionary photography in the Cold War era.

To expand further reflections on images and history, we conducted a special interview with director Lau Kek Huat, who recently won a Golden Horse Award for his documentary "From Island to Island." The film provocatively combines numerous image materials and relentless questioning to confront the dark memory of Taiwanese people participating in Japanese military atrocities in Southeast Asia at the end of World War II. This interview brings more profound reflections on "history" and "justice." In the face of the ongoing history of imperial violence after the war, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay's special article meticulously analyzes how the expulsion of Palestinians by the Israeli regime since 1948, sanctioned by European and American powers, and the visual construction effect of presenting them as refugees, systematically expanded into the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which urgently requires the international community to face up to and immediately stop this crime against humanity.

In addition, Kao Chung-li expounds on his installation "Sixteen Hours of Love," which reweaves an incomplete film copy of Alain Resnais' "Hiroshima Mon Amour" (1959), a film bearing the scars of war. The installation uses twelve slide projectors to display over nine hundred still frames in interwoven motion, subtly deconstructing the spatio-temporal structure of audio-visual politics. This issue also unveils the colorful finale of Chen Chuan-hsing's "Personal Spiritual History" trilogy, exploring his visual journeys and darkroom experiments at the end of the last century, his essential reflections on "light" and "color," and rare recollections of his early photographic experiences.

At the same time, we engage in a creative dialogue about photo book making with young artists Lin Shih-yen, Tsai Ting-pang, and Li Li-ya, who recently received international awards for their photo books, exploring the inherent atmosphere of book editing. In memory of Huang Yung-sung (1943-2024), a pioneer who long focused on folk art and practiced ethnographic photography, this issue specially features his early photographic works and Hsi-sung's recollections of their shared literary youth and their work on "Echo Magazine" reportage photography. Finally, this journal pays tribute to the departed artist Chang Chao-tang (1943-2024). A special issue is currently being prepared and will be shared with everyone at the beginning of the new year. The editorial journey is long and arduous, and we thank our readers for their continued support and patience.