Chien-Chi Chang: I Do, I Do, I Do

by Cheryl Lai, Chang Ch'ien-Ch'ang

These Taiwanese wedding pictures are not the celebratory nuptial norm that are the bread and butter of photographers everywhere, but rather a jaundiced look at the institution and the industry of marriage. A couple is caught in a net of spray-string confetti; a bride poses among ruin; a chain of wedding couples kisses in a zoo with caged elephants behind them; and a post-nuptial couple, in all their Western finery, sleep soundly, and separately, in the back of a limousine. I Do, I Do, I Do reveals conflicts that the artist, a 41-year-old unwed man with three younger sisters and no brothers, feels about the notion of mariage and all the traditional family pressures that it entails.

120 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2002