VOP Issue 36 Gospel Visuality: The Missionary Images Issue

This issue of VOP delves into the vast visual archive produced by Western missionaries. A body of work that is impossible to overlook due to its sheer volume in re-examining the visual experiences of Taiwan and East Asia. We analyze the production process and cultural politics behind the images, as well as their profound impact on the modernization of the body and perception.

We first take a look at Chen Wei-Chi’s exploration of how Western missionaries who have come to Taiwan since the mid-19th century, including James Maxwell, William Campbell, Thomas Barclay and George Leslie Mackay, had directly or indirectly participated in early photography activities in Taiwan, turning the photographic testimonies of missionary work into an image record of Taiwan’s history that is being widely reproduced and disseminated today. Joseph W. Ho examines the large number of photos, films, albums and illustrations left behind by the American missionaries who were forced to leave China after the Chinese Civil War to reveal the tortuous trajectory of modern visuality of the missionaries in East Asia in the early 20th century which were marked by censorship and reconstruction. Harry Yi-Jui Wu goes through British medical missionary Dr. David Landsborough IV’s family photo collection from the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan, and discusses the reproduction and dissemination of early missionary images to the others, and how photographs and images were key to consolidating the classic narrative of medical missionary work, revealing the complex relationship between medicine, religion and imagery. Hwang Nae-Chyi explores how the Kuangch’i Program Service set up by Catholic Jesuits introduced communication technology from the US into Taiwan in the mid 20th century, shaping the early development of the country’s television, animation and filming industries. With declassified files, Lee Wei-I follows the traces of Father Frederic J. Foley through his photographs taken in post-war Taiwan that were published in The Face of Taiwan in 1959 and how he managed to pull off a large-scale solo exhibition that he subsequently held at the US Information Service office in Taipei during the highly oppressive era of martial law which became representative of missionary photography during the years of the Cold War.

To broaden our thinking on imagery and history, we conducted a special interview with director Lau Kek-Huat, whose film From Island to Island just won the Best Documentary Feature at the Golden Horse Awards. By combining extensive image archives and relentless questioning, the film confronts the dark memories of Taiwanese people participating in the Japanese military’s atrocities committed in Southeast Asia during the final days of World War II. The interview will bring more thought-provoking reflections on “history” and “justice”. As we face the history of imperial violence that continues even till this day, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s essay provides an in-depth analysis of the displacement of Palestinians by the Israeli regime since 1948, endorsed by Western powers, and the systematic portrayal of Palestinians as refugees through imagery. She argues that this has escalated into the genocide that is happening now in Gaza, calling for global attention and immediate action to stop this heinous act.