![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/GongGong-e1317541391772.jpg\" "\\"GongGong\\"")
<\/p>\nI made this photo during a winter holiday visit home to Taiwan while I was in college. Both my grandfathers loved having their picture taken. They were so regal & stoic, so proud & handsome in that Chinese grandfatherly kind of way. This is my mother’s father, who I knew as Gong Gong. His Chinese name, as we knew it, was Chu Hsu, but when I started researching my family genealogy & interviewed my mom’s oldest sister, I found out that Gong Gong was actually born Zhe-Chiang Hsu in September 0f 1904. When he was 15, he wanted to become a teacher, but he was two years too young to do so according to Chinese law. So, he borrowed his cousin’s birth certificate, & was permitted to study & get a teaching certificate. And from then on, he had to continue to use his cousin’s name! I wonder what name his cousin used…<\/p>\n
I love this photo because it captures everything about my Gong Gong that I loved so much–his perfect posture (he did Tai Chi Chuan & walked every day until he passed), his wise, scholarly expression, his cane, his jacket, & how unruffled he is by the wind blowing his beard. According to Chinese tradition, a man is not to shave for one month when his wife passes away; I think it’s meant to show that you’re grieving so much, you can’t possibly care about your appearance. My grandmother died when my Gong Gong was 77; he never shaved again, & wore his beard until he died at the age of 91.<\/p>\n
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I was so lucky to have spent much of my childhood with my grandparents. Gong Gong walked me to & from school each day. He took me to the park. I don’t remember much of what we talked about, but I do remember watching him at his desk as he wrote in his journal every day. I would stand at the doorway & wonder what he was chronicling. And I watched as he exercised, swinging his arms & hands front & back as part of his Tai Chi. And everyday, he would walk & count the number of steps he took–I think his goal was 5,000 (or was it 10,000?) a day.<\/p>\n
When my grandfather was older, he started to lose his hearing. I would sit with him while he watched TV, & we didn’t talk much, but I always felt such a sense of calm & safety near him. I have no idea what he thought of me; I was wild as a teenager, but he never seemed to judge me. I felt really happy just reading a novel near him while he watched the news, & if I saw that he had dozed off, I would just lay my book on my chest & take a nap next to him.<\/p>\n
And on a photographic-cultural note, I was so excited to send this photograph to him, because I had hand-printed it myself in my makeshift darkroom in my apartment bathroom. “Sloppy borders” were my new obsession, so I included one on his portrait, because I thought it made it extra artsy. When I went home to visit, I noticed that he didn’t have my picture displayed in his room as I had hoped. In fact, it wasn’t anywhere in the house. When I asked my mom about it, she finally told me that in Chinese culture, black outlines only appear on stationery that announces someone’s death. So, I had unwittingly created an unlucky portrait of my grandfather–I was so mortified! I reprinted one for him without it & put it in a burgundy frame, but I don’t know that I ever undid the faux pas.<\/p>\n
This is a scan from my original handmade silver gelatin print. I forgot how much I miss holding a print in my hand in this day & age of digital. I love the feeling of the matte Ilford paper, & I like that I can see how the color is beginning to turn where the chemicals are showing through. This print must be about 20 years old now. It’s hard to believe that I made something that long ago that I still love like the first time I saw the image floating out of the water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I made this photo during a winter holiday visit home to Taiwan while I was in college. Both my grandfathers loved having their picture taken. They were so regal & stoic, so proud & handsome in that Chinese grandfatherly kind of way. This is my mother’s father, who I knew as Gong Gong. His Chinese…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,39],"tags":[126,33,49,26,109],"class_list":["post-2250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alices-archives","category-personal","tag-alices-archives","tag-black-white","tag-natural-light","tag-on-location","tag-outdoors"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2250"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2257,"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250\/revisions\/2257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wonderland-photography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}