shashasha

January 11, 2020. As the demonstrations continued every day in Hong Kong and the world slowly became aware of the existence of a new virus, Taiwan held the 15th presidential elections.

The election represented a major crossroad between the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party), which is determined to maintain Taiwan’s independence, and the KMT (Kuomintang), which insists on strengthening relations with China.

With the election approaching, photographer Daisuke Tomizawa (who was born in Taiwan to a Taiwanese father and a Japanese mother and spent his life in Taiwan until age 16) photographed his home country, his heart oscillating between anxiety and tension. What would the future hold?

“Nowadays, we are divided into several ‘big subjects’ by current discourses.
‘You’ are no longer ‘you’, and ‘I’ am no longer ‘I’.
Politics, it seems, is something that exists ‘outside’ of us.
We lose sight of the politics of ourselves, a very personal presence within us.
With this book, I try to make us notice, forget, and remember again the many invisible things that can be found only in every ‘small subject.’”
— from the artist’s statement

The book also includes a short story by Chinese writer Han Meimei.
All texts included in Japanese and Chinese.