Washing Clothes by the Riverbank

After returning to Taiwan in 1935 and opening the Nan-gwang Photography Shop, Den Nan-gwang shot a great deal of rural scenery around Beipu, Hsinchu, and Zhudong, leaving a large number of negatives, evidence of the changes that had taken place from the Japanese colonial period to the postwar1950s and 1960s in the regional environments populated by Hakka people. Den chose a portrait format to shoot a sight often seen in Hakka regions, a woman washing clothes in a river. The geese accompanying the woman swim contentedly on the surface of the river, but on the right one proud goose spreads its wings to take flight. The bird's upraised beak makes it seem as though it is singing a mournful song, fearing it will be lonely by itself. The work is a lighthearted portrayal of life in the countryside. "Washing Clothes by the Riverbank"?is one of a series of works that was enlarged by Den Nan-gwang himself and archived by the Council for Cultural Affairs (today's Ministry of Culture). There is little information on record, and a review of digitalized files of photos Den took over the course of his career turned up no negatives of those photos, indicating that there few surviving originals from the series among collections of Den's early works, an important fact to consider when studying his creative aesthetic concepts.