Annotation 4 (Draft.)- A Nature photographer's journey across Taiwan from 1973-1987

Hsu, Jen-Shiu. (1988). A Nature photographer's journey across Taiwan from 1973-1987. Taipei, Taiwan: n.d.

The fourth annotation in my research paper is a photo album with a ‘A nature photographer's, 徐仁修's journey across Taiwan from 1973-1987, which is also the title of this photo album. It is one of the photo records of Mr. 徐仁修 which represented Taiwan through natural scenery from the ocean surrounding us to the myriads of great mountains towering over 3000m above sea level. This photo album has over 70 sceneries, including the well-known queen's head of the northern coast of Taiwan (p. 30-31), the awe-inspiring one tree forest in 恆春 (p. 182 ), and a tranquilly beautiful scene taken on the island of Maoyu (貓嶼、澎湖).

徐's album demonstrate the nature's two ways of creating non-animate and animate things. One is the top-down method, and the other the bottom-up method. These two methods offer a solution to the problem posed in the thesis statement by giving being natural a new definition.

First I would take the queen's head as an example, it demonstrates the nature's creation of non-animate things through the top down method; the 'top-down' method works like this, the unnecessary parts are removed to create what is finally there. In the contrary, the awe-inspiring fig (白榕) is an example of the bottom-up method. The bottom up method is unique to all living life forms on earth. For example, we can always sculpt a flower from a piece of wood, which is the top-down method, but only living things such as seeds whose diameter is no more than a centimeter can develop and grow into a towering tree as high as 50 meters, taking the pines as example. And this is the bottom-up method. Both of the two examples given in 徐's photo album gives the true definition of being natural.

This photo album reminds us what Nature once used to be and serves as a warning if we were to carefully examine our present state of the environment and the definition we have for being 'Natural.' It is from here that we can derive a new definition of being natural, giving a new alternative to the presently practiced horticulture which harms the environment.