Between Sea and Shore — A Starting Point

Last week, I visited Donggang in Pingtung with a friend for sashimi, and on the way back we did some street photography along the harbor. Reviewing the photos later, this image caught my attention again.

In the frame: brightly colored red, green, and blue canopies draped across a fishing boat. Beneath them stands a fisherman whose skin has been darkened by years at sea and sun exposure. Clothes hang drying on the boat, surrounded by hull, cables, fishing gear, and the makeshift living space of a vessel's life. These intense colors, bodies, and objects made me press the shutter without hesitation.

Yet when I returned to study the image on my computer, I tried to look past the surface elements that had first caught my eye — the vivid canopies, the weathered skin, the drying laundry, the visual order of the boat. I began to think about what lay behind what I could see: the actual working environment of these crew members, their life at sea, their mental state, and the condition of moving endlessly between land and ocean.

I don't know yet whether this project will take shape, but this photograph has become the starting point for what I hope will be a long-term body of work on Taiwan's distant-water fishing industry.

Project Title: Between Sea and Shore

Project Concept

Distant-water fishing refers to ocean fishing conducted beyond the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone, or in international waters. For most distant-water crew members, a single voyage is not a matter of days but of continuous weeks, months, or even longer. Once the boat leaves the harbor, the sea becomes not just a workspace but the entirety of life.

On board, food, clothing, sleep, physical health, and relationships are all compressed into a limited space. Crew members must coexist for extended periods, facing sunburn, rough seas, mechanical noise, the smell of fish, fatigue, and the unpredictable dangers of the ocean. For them, the sea is not a romantic landscape — it is a prolonged, enclosed, high-intensity labor site.

This project aims to photograph the moment when distant-water crew members come ashore. It is not the simple joy of homecoming, but a silence born of exhaustion. They return from the long stretch of sea to land, still carrying the salt, the smell of fish, and the marks of wind and waves on their bodies. The harbor lights, the sound of voices, and the solid ground feel like a long-lost reality. The relief of a safe return is real, but the concerns about the catch, income, family, physical condition, and the next voyage quickly press back in.

What I want to observe is not fishing labor itself, but the transitional state of people moving between sea and land: the body has returned to shore, but the mind still seems to sway on the water. These brief gaps, periods of waiting, silences, and traces of private life make up a side of the distant-water fisherman's daily existence that rarely comes into view.

Shooting Direction

The primary sites for this project will be harbors, fishing boats, vessel interiors, and the surrounding spaces after crew members come ashore. The images will not center on dramatic fishing scenes but will focus on the state after labor: docking, unloading, washing, resting, smoking, eating, making phone calls, packing bags, staring into the distance, or preparing to head out again.

I also hope, with consent, to photograph crew members' private spaces — bunk beds, photos of family, clothing, everyday objects, religious items, magazine clippings, and phone images. These objects may be small, but they may be the threads of meaning that sustain people through the long hours at sea.

Issue Focus

Taiwan's distant-water fishing industry has long relied on migrant fishworkers. These positions typically involve intense physical labor, long periods away from home, enclosed living environments, and limited access to communication and assistance at sea. The Control Yuan, the National Human Rights Commission, and international human rights organizations have repeatedly raised concerns about the rights, working conditions, and oversight of migrant fishworkers in Taiwan's distant-water fleet.

Yet this project does not aim to define their suffering with a single image, nor to reduce fishworkers to victims. I hope instead, through quiet observation, to show the complex circumstances they navigate — between labor, solitude, income, family, and migration.

Visual Language

I want to photograph in a restrained, understated way, with a sense of distance. The images will avoid melodramatic representations of hardship and instead use body posture, spatial compression, traces of objects, light, and the harbor environment to suggest a psychological state caught between return and departure.