SYU Ching-Pwo

Two figures walk into cold light, their bodies receding behind the vast circle of a bicycle wheel that fills the foreground in Chill.
   In Confidence, two other men lean close in conversation, a bicycle beside them like a quiet hinge — separating and connecting at once.
    SYU Ching-Pwo’s photographs “hold the moment,” combining documentarian clarity with thoughtful composition, preserving human experience and social history with a precise, composed eye.
    In the postwar years, bicycles were becoming part of daily life in Taiwan. Starting from the late 1950s to 1960s, a locally sold “Lucky” bicycle could cost around NT$900, with installment plans common — mobility within reach, but not without calculation. For many, a bike marked the possibility of work, distance, and return. The brand was widely recommended, even to civil servants, gradually turning mobility into a shared routine rather than a luxury.
    Wu Ming-Yi’s The Stolen Bicycle — a principal conceptual departure point for the Biennial — centers on a son’s search for his father’s lost bike. That journey becomes a way to read the island’s unresolved past and his own place within it. In Chill, the nearness of the wheel and the distant walkers perhaps echo that search: motion and memory circling toward belonging. As in Confidence, the bicycle beside the men could suggest the same steady yearning: for home, and for a way to continue.