Beyond Words. Photographer Ko Si-chi (1929-2020)

Ko Si-chi (Ke Xijie) was born in 1929 in Tainan, Taiwan.

As a teenager, he witnessed his wealthy family go bankrupt, his mother die, and his family home be destroyed by US Air Force bombings.

He also witnessed the Kuomintang government’s “White Terror” years.

“After February 28, during the White Terror, life became full of fear, if you said something wrong, you could be caught and shot at any time. I often woke up in the middle of the night, and the devil in the dark was staring coldly into my eyes.”

In 1947, Ko graduated from Kaohsiung Industrial School, which was founded during the Japanese colonial period. He joined an alkali manufacturing company, serving as a draftsman in the technical department.

The director, a Japanese, gave him a Welta folding camera when he left Taiwan. The young man became interested in photography, which was new to the islanders. But he was still a long way from becoming a professional photographer.

In 1950, Ko volunteered for the army and joined the first Taiwanese sergeant group. But drill and corruption led to him deserting. After a year and a half of wandering, the young man surrendered to the authorities, served his sentence, and served his term.

His first opportunity to officially study photography came only when he was 30. Ko went to Japan and entered the Tokyo College of Photography. He studied with the famous photographer Shigemori Koen. At the same time, Ko also became interested in literature and classical music.

In 1962, Ko held his first solo photography exhibition in Kaohsiung. Art historian Ku Hsien-Liang invited the aspiring photographer to come to Taiwan.

Ko Hsi-chi’s lens immortalized Taiwan’s history. Many of the images, such as “Moon World”, a unique landscape of the hilly terrain in southern Taiwan, “Dancers at the Queen’s Head”, a rock formation in Yehliu Geopark, have become part of the collective memory of an entire generation. These images were taken before Taiwan was overrun with tourists.

Ko soon moved to New York. He worked for $65 a week in the studio of commercial photographer Silano, then opened his own studio. His work was bought by famous magazines, but Ko himself was not looking for money, but for experience: to learn what lies behind the creativity and professionalism of commercial photography.

After eight years in New York, he became famous and rich, but this success only filled Ko with a feeling of emptiness. He closed the studio, burned all his work and moped for a month.

“I was already over 50, and I wondered if this was all there was to life.”
And again, Ko set out on a journey through the vast world. In Amsterdam, he bought a used car and took only the bare necessities and a Nikon camera.

Starting all over again… and again… Searching for what is hidden in the heart is the story of Ko’s entire life.

Many of his most important works, including “The Presence of Venus”, “Wood and Wall”, “Ole, Antonio”, were created during this time. Ko finally found what he was looking for – the intersection of time, space and his inner self, captured in a single moment. This is the essence of the aesthetics of his work.

In 1988, he and poet Cheng Chou-yu visited a coastal village in China, and one evening, Ko climbed a hill to photograph the moon. He stayed until the early morning, until the sunlight began to shimmer on the sea, creating magical black and gold ripples…

A porcelain vase was made from the original photograph. To show the vastness of the ocean, the vase is concave vertically and convex horizontally, creating the illusion of infinite space.

According to the designer, Lee, it was quite a challenge to represent the changing light and shadows reflected on the surface of the sea by the rising sun. Creating patterns that recreated the grains of sand, waves, and the play of light and shadow depicted in the original photograph was an unprecedented challenge.

In the last years of his life, he moved around in a wheelchair, but still continued to tirelessly look through the viewfinder at our vast, beautiful world.