Li Aming's fishing crew photo documentary: a raw and desolate arena of life

His name is Li A-ming, and he could not be more ordinary. The impression is that photographers his age have long since made a distinguished name for themselves. But Li A-ming seems like a newcomer who appeared out of nowhere: at 58, he recently released a series of photographs of foreign fishing workers in the fishing ports of Kaohsiung, and their gorgeous, fantastical colors and highly charged, cinematic feel quickly captured many eyes.

"Before this, I had not picked up a camera for nearly 20 years," Li A-ming said bluntly. In fact, he is a veteran photography elder, a graduate of the technical group of the Film and Drama Division at National Taiwan Academy of Arts, and he served as a photojournalist for the Liberty Times, United Evening News, and China Times Weekly, eventually becoming head of the multimedia digital imaging group at China Times Weekly, director of the information office, and deputy director of China Times online imaging. Once he was no longer on the front line as a supervisor, he took fewer photographs and switched to image processing. In the 91st year of the Republic of China, he resigned and returned to his hometown in Kaohsiung to care for his elderly mother and child, and from then on he did not touch images at all and had very little contact with the photography world, just like "going abroad for further study."

Li A-ming describes this as the darkest period of his life; reading, films, and music were his salvation. More than ten years later, his hair has turned gray and his back is slightly hunched, but the fire in his eyes has not gone out.

Three years ago his mother passed away, and his children had all grown up and gone north. "What is an old man supposed to do alone at home?" Li A-ming dug out his old camera, removed the lens, and bought a new digital body. The moment he put it back together, it seemed his old photographic soul had returned, but he was already a completely different person.