A Young Woman

This photo and "Two Young Women" were earlier archived by the Council for Cultural Affairs and later given to the National Taiwan Museum of Art. Den snapped the photos while serving his first term as director-general of the Taiwan Provincial Photography Research Association, a time when he was promoting activities for amateur camera buffs, such as female portrait photo sessions and outdoor model-shoots. Den himself developed and enlarged the priceless photos. This photo's theme is completely different from that of "Two Young Women." In the latter picture, Den snapped the models in different postures, body language that implicitly conveyed the young women's emotional states. In this work, the model is leaning on a boulder, its face carved full of messages left by earlier visitors to the site; by contrast, the young woman is alone and lonely, lost in reverie. What is she thinking about? Beside her, a Chinese character "cheng 誠," meaning "sincerity," only half visible, perhaps best answers that question. A review of digitalized files of photos Den Nan-gwang took throughout his life turned up negatives taken with a Leica 135 miniature camera and Minox subminiature camera. The angle and the different emotions expressed in the picture testify to a master photographer's abundant creativity.