"Fringe Taiwan" by Chien-Wen Lin

"Fringe Taiwan" is an independently published photography book by artist Chien-Wen Lin, capturing Taiwan from 2016 to 2024. Through the daily life perspective of the artist's LGBTQ+ identity as a gay man, the book documents Taiwan's social changes around the passage of the Marriage Equality Act (Act for Implementation of J.Y. Interpretation No. 748) around 2019. The images reveal the conflicts and struggles of identity in societal margins, reflecting both personal marginalization and Taiwan's geopolitical status of unrecognized sovereignty and instrumentalization.

Symbolically placing boundaries at the book's left and right ends, the artist metaphorically represents his abstract experiences in constructing identity through physical browsing, embodying a sense of "fringe": filled with ambiguity and uncertainty, potentially overlooked or suppressed, yet also demonstrating diversity, fluidity, and a rejection of frameworks. The fringe boldly exists as a statement of Lin Chien-Wen Lin’s view on flattened "beauty" under modern capitalist frameworks.

In the form of still life, portraits, and scenes, the book explores various incomplete "beauties" hidden in the margins of Taiwanese daily life through photography themes. It presents the artist's personal perspective on the marginalized LGBTQ+ community in Taiwan, while also metaphorically highlighting Taiwan's isolation in the international community.

This book is also dedicated to Migu Lu, BoBo, Xiao Qiao, Red Tails, Eden, and friends who have felt oppression, struggle, and loneliness in their journey of identity formation.

Chien-Wen Lin was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1987. After graduating from Shih Chien University in 2012, he pursued an MPS in Fashion Photography at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York. Upon returning to Taiwan, he co-founded MW Studio TW with artist Manbo Key in 2017. Together, they explored how fashion photography, as an expression of mainstream aesthetic culture, can embody gender equality principles while integrating Taiwan's vibrant aesthetics.

About the author:
In his recent personal works, Chien-Wen Lin draws from his identity as a cisgender gay man and approaches his projects from an LGBTQ+ perspective. By capturing small traces of everyday life such as still lifes, portraits, and scenes, he experiments with how images from different times can be reassembled to form a new reality. Through this process, he challenges whether images are as intuitively "beautiful" as we imagine. He also expresses the abstract feelings of marginality experienced in the struggles of identity construction throughout one’s life journey.

Softcover, 208 pages, Limited to 500
Inner Pages:  gloss art paper, double-sided color printing
Cover: Leica super special gloss art paper, double-sided full-color with two-color hot stamping, Polypropylene Coating
Binding: Exposed spine with white thread and glue binding