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Round the Clock
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Photographs published in Kyoto Journal

These photographs were taken in the Chingmei area of Taipei, Taiwan, approximately every four hours from 6:00 am on Saturday, September 13 to 2:00 am on Sunday 14, 2003. The day was divided into six, four-hour periods: 06:00, 10:00, 14:00, 18:00, 22:00 and 02:00.

A typical weekend day in this area would run something like this:

06:00 shops closed, not much happening; beginning of an unlicensed early morning wet market free-for-all, selling fish, vegetables and household goods.
10:00 Wet market is busy and crowded, but starting to wind down from its 09:00 peak time.
14:00 Siesta time: wet market is gone, people napping after lunch, stores start receiving deliveries.
18:00 Night market starts off slowly, storefronts open, street stalls crowd the public space, people come in for dinner. The air is filled with competing strong aromas from the many food stalls firing-up.
22:00 Night market crowded and rocking on, but actually just past the 21:00 peak time. Movement is slow as people, stalls and merchandise are crowded together, creating total compression and absence of personal space.
02:00 Night market has shut down and public has gone home, but a second life starts on a side street catering to the night market workers, after bar drunks and other stragglers.

After taking these pictures I had "street lag" and needed the entire next day to recover. I've heard that repeatedly disrupting someone's sleep is a form of torture; it wasn't that bad, but my bike ride home on Sunday around 02:30 was pretty wobbly. The project was a lot of fun and it was interesting to see a day cycle through in this way. Each piece of land in this area is really milked for all its worth by multiple users with radically different occupations. In some instances the transformation was so radical that I had trouble finding the same locations only hours later.

Taipei '03