"Dark Image: Seeing the Unseen" Exhibition - Perception of the Unseen

"Dark Image: Seeing the Unseen" attempts to interweave the "visual" and the "non-visual" to respond to the essential issues of "seeing" and "being seen," "seen" and "unseen" in the history of photography, exploring how image representation constructs our understanding of "existence" and "non-existence." The exhibition layout structures two sub-themes based on different perceptual levels and social contexts: "Boundary of the Gaze" and "Perception of the Unseen," sequentially revealing the power dynamics of viewing blind portraits, the possibilities of non-visual photography, and the cultural representation of disability and class.
The "Perception of the Unseen" thematic exhibition area shifts from "the blind being viewed" to "neglected social perception." This theme emphasizes the image interpretation and cultural politics between disability and class, featuring works by sighted photographers and contemporary artists focusing on issues such as blindness, disability, touch, and class. It includes "Tactile Signals," exhibiting works that go beyond vision to explore the perceptual boundaries between body and perception, image and material, the visible and the invisible. Simultaneously, it continues the sub-theme "Who is Unseen?," returning to the reinterpretation of blind portraits, using works by Taiwanese photographers from the collection of the National Center of Photography and Images (國家攝影文化中心) to reflect on the "disabling society" within the local context regarding the visual representation of people with visual impairments, focusing on the intersectional issues of gender, disability, and social class, and showing through images how marginalized groups are represented, labeled, or objectified by the image system.