Jianguo North Road Lane 11

"Jianguo North Road Lane 11" is a photography series that documents the final days of a place that shaped both personal memory and artistic practice.

Quietly standing in Zhongshan District, these connected wooden houses were first built during the Japanese colonial period for railway workers, carrying nearly a century of time within their walls. Born in the early 1920s as part of the Taiwan Railway Bureau's employee housing complex, they once sheltered countless lower-ranking officials and their families. The undulating double-pitched roofs, the weight of fire-resistant walls, and the delicate details of Japanese architecture together wove ordinary yet profound chapters of daily life.

In 2007, these houses were designated as historical buildings, yet unfortunately became entangled in the tug-of-war between preservation and development. The Workers' Welfare Committee and the Construction and Planning Agency's urban renewal plans intertwined into webs of unclear jurisdiction, leaving multiple agencies arguing their cases while none truly tended to the buildings' fragility and aging. Through this prolonged dispute, roof tiles crumbled, window frames grew mottled, and some structures quietly shed their historical building status altogether.

Now, as demolition work inch by inch devours this landscape of memory, I return once more to this place that sparked my creative journey. In 2020, I first discover and glide through these quiet alleyways on my skateboard; in 2022, at these same corners, I captured my first photograph of a stray cat—those images of wandering felines would eventually become the core of my 2024 exhibition "Interconnected," as if responding to some twist of fate.

Through my lens, I bear witness to more than architectural decay; I document the displacement of communities both human and feline, the weight of bureaucratic neglect, and the fragile nature of memory itself. Each photograph serves as both eulogy and evidence—a final record of spaces that once provided shelter, inspiration, and artistic awakening.

I wait only for the sound of the last wall falling.