Reflexivity and the Challenges of Ethnographic Film

ABSTRACT

This article explores the cultural geography of a distinctive mode of bridal photography that developed in Taiwan beginning in the 1980s and by the 1990s had become virtually a universal cultural practice for weddings, cutting across the class and urban/rural social divisions. Characterized by large-scale high key portraits of brides and grooms dressed in a variety of finery, posed in numerous settings, and exuding varied emotional states, the photographs are a source of national pride for Taiwan as they are famous throughout the region. Using theories of competitive consumption, imagined community, and time-space compression, the article explores ways in which Taipei's bridal industry commands space and constructs place.