TENG Nan-Guang

A bicycle cuts through the scene — young rider in motion, wheels almost a blur — while a woman and a bystander anchor the street. In 1940s Taipei under Japanese colonial rule, bicycles were largely imported from Japan; they marked a managed kind of modernity—movement present, but not entirely one’s own, reflecting who set the terms of daily life.
    The fleeting bicycle resonates with Wu Ming-Yi’s novel The Stolen Bicycle — one of the Biennial’s three conceptual departure points — where a son searches for his father’s missing bike and, in the process, pieces together family memory and the island’s layered histories.
    TENG Nan-Guang used a lightweight Leica to record streets in Taihei-chō (now Yanping North Road). Having lived in Japan in the 1930s, he drew on New Photography and Realist Photography to form a lucid, modern eye attuned to movement, chance, and time.
    A woman lifts reading glasses to one eye; in her other hand, a note—maybe a name or a bill. The setting of a mid-century wine house provided TENG with the possibility of photographing a woman, which was otherwise socially sensitive or restrictive. Many such venues grew from Jiulou: large banquet restaurants where food, drink, and hired company were part of the service, sitting between respectable dining and discreet adult entertainment.
    TENG Nan-Guang, active from the 1930s–60s in studio portraiture and street scenes, uses a tight frame and soft light to focus on small actions. The photo captures a social setting where yearning took a measured, coded form — desire expressed through ritual and play.