Positive: THe World Is Beautiful

translated from “Above Flames” by Wu, Ming-Yi

When the old man was near death, his eyesight had almost completely failed. He knew it was due to the aging process. His lens had clouded over, and his macula had degenerated, leaving his view of the world hazy and distorted over the years. Aging is an irreversible process, a gradual farewell to one’s own body.

The old man reminisced about his almost indulgent childhood and youth. He had lived in a world filled with umbrellas. If they were to open every umbrella his family’s factory had produced, one after another, they could likely cover the entire land. His father owned the largest umbrella manufacturing plant in Russia, though his family’s wealth did not begin with his father. His grandmother had married a diamond merchant, which was a reason why, despite being Jewish, they were able to settle smoothly in Moscow. As a young man, he admired his father, who, despite their wealth, was humble and discreetly employed and protected smuggled Jewish workers in his factory. This risk taken by his father, who gambled the family’s fate for these workers, stirred in him a profound sense of purpose. In 1917, the February Revolution erupted, bringing political unrest, and in October, Lenin staged a coup, narrowly escaping multiple assassination attempts. In 1918, anti-Semitism began to spread across the country, and the young man’s family, disguised as Bolshevik soldiers escorting prisoners, escaped across the border, enduring a long journey that eventually led them to Berlin.

It was around the age he would have attended university, and in Berlin, he chose to study Oriental art, but he always maintained a strong interest in optics. He remembered when he was seven years old, his grandmother gifted him a microscope with 150x magnification. The microscope’s lens aligned perfectly with his camera lens, and he attached the camera to the microscope to capture his first micro photograph—a cockroach’s leg. In that magnified world, this tiny insect limb from the kitchen startled his vision, and he became engrossed in this microcosm, focusing his camera-microscope on scales, pollen, and single-celled organisms in water.

After some time and effort, he developed a microscopic photography system which, from a technical perspective, “used magnetic light to reveal the living internal structures under the microscope.” From a literary standpoint, it was as though he had unlocked an unseen world with his instruments and light. His work in microscopic photography proved valuable for medical and natural sciences, and his reputation gradually spread. On one occasion, a Nazi party member approached him, asking if he could use his microscopic techniques to distinguish Aryan blood from Jewish blood. He replied without hesitation, “There would be no difference.”

He began to sense that Berlin, too, would soon become hostile to Jews. At the age of thirty-eight, he took his Rolleiflex 6×6 camera and Leica camera and set off on a journey across Jewish communities in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, Latvia, and Lithuania. For four years, he lived as simply as possible, using a concealed camera to document his surroundings. This was partly because traditional Jews did not like to be photographed and partly to avoid the attention of the Nazi Party. In his later years, he often reflected that the suffering he endured and the persistence in his craft over those four years had been to leave behind a sorrowful language and record of Jewish life on the brink of the Holocaust.

In 1939, anti-Semitism and “anti-Semitic” (anti-Semitism not only targeted Jews but also included Hebrews, Arabs, Phoenicians, Assyrians, etc.) sentiment reached its peak in Germany. He first arranged for his wife and children, along with his photos, to leave Berlin. Unfortunately, he was arrested by the police under the charge of being a “stateless person” and was held in a concentration camp for three months before he was freed and could escape to New York.

Although fluent in Russian, German, French, Polish, Italian, and Yiddish, he didn’t speak English. In this new, vibrant metropolis, he further immersed himself in his research on microscopic photography, discovering it was a fittingly silent pursuit. Later, an art critic remarked that he “used his advanced medical techniques to dissect the retina of a fly’s eye, capturing images of how a fly might view the world; in essence, he used the fly’s eye as a lens for his photographs.” For the first time, humanity could imagine how this seemingly lower form of life saw the world. Yet this perspective was not trivial; it offered an attempt to explain a unique worldview within nature. His advancements in microscopic photography made him an invaluable collaborator for research in medicine, natural science, and biology, specializing in capturing the “structural organizations of beings” that humanity was only beginning to understand, such as proteins, hormones, and vitamins. He said:

“Through the microscope, ‘Nature,’ ‘God,’ or whatever name one gives to the creator of the universe appears with clarity and strength. Anything made by human hands, when magnified, looks terrible—coarse, irregular, unsymmetrical… Yet within nature, each small fragment of life is precious. The greater the magnification, the more intricate the details that emerge, forming a flawless microcosm like an endless series of nested worlds.”

He ultimately lived nearly a century, remembered as a zoologist, medical researcher, Oriental art scholar, linguist, and more. But most importantly, he was one of the most significant and moving documentary photographers of the last century, and undoubtedly, he was the finest microscopic photographer.

He was Roman Vishniac. Without him, our discovery of the minutiae of the world—this vast and hidden beauty—would have come much later, revealing a universe humanity had never seen before.

In the Middle Ages, many naturalists were much like the legendary court “miniature painters” in Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red, possessing a hand-drawing ability so lifelike it seemed photographic. This was because, traditionally, hand-drawing was the only way to preserve the complexity of the natural world, aside from killing organisms and making specimens of them.

Robert Hooke, who wrote Micrographia, left the most profound impression on me as a naturalist with an extraordinary gift for hand-drawing. From a young age, Hooke was deeply fascinated by both art and science. His remarkable talent was quickly recognized, and during his studies, he was mentored by the astronomer Seth Ward, who taught him various techniques in designing machinery and telescopes, and imparted knowledge in astronomy, chemistry, and medicine. In 1665, Hooke developed a compound microscope through which he observed the cell walls of plants, reminiscent of tiny rooms. With the mind of a scientist and the hand of an artist, Hooke drew these cells, marking the beginning of his career as a unique “microscopic artist.”

To this day, seeing Hooke’s illustrations, I am struck not only by the intricate details of the species he depicted but also by his extraordinary patience and concentration. To draw the compound eye of an insect, one must be as disciplined as a Zen master, as devoted as a whirling Sufi dervish, and as unyielding as a spider continually weaving its web—repeating detail upon detail endlessly. The details are infinite, tightly interwoven like an endless roll of fabric, because biological structures are just that—a mysterious organic order. Hooke was called “the Leonardo of London” because of his astonishingly versatile talent.

Hooke’s Micrographia itself can be considered a work of art. Over time, drawing became a core skill for naturalists and anthropologists alike. It was not until a century after Hooke’s death that drawings were used in field guides, mediating natural knowledge for ordinary readers. Whenever I go abroad, the first section I browse in bookstores is “field books,” precisely because they combine science, art, and a “popularizing intent.”

Bird watchers might know John James Audubon, whose Birds of America, now one of the world’s most valuable books, took a decade to complete. Audubon, a brilliant bird observer and painter, spent years traversing America’s fields, oceans, swamps, and mountains to depict over 400 species of birds. But, as cameras did not exist at the time, he first had to hunt these birds, then position their limbs with wire in his studio to accurately capture the feather and body structure details. This book implies a possibility: if the artist draws precisely and thoroughly enough for readers to grasp a species’ features easily, is it possible to identify birds without having to kill them? Henceforth, hand-drawing, once a servant of natural science, became markedly different from a rifle. In the past, scientists had to acquire specimens to identify them, and shooting was necessary; now, illustrations could replace guns, marking a significant turning point in humanity’s relationship with other species. However, drawing requires immense patience and talent. While not high-barrier, not everyone has the time and energy to do it.

Because aside from the time spent observing, hand-drawing demands extensive hours of “recreating,” whereas photography only requires a shutter click. Audubon completed Birds of America close to when Daguerre invented the daguerreotype. Photography, initially considered a tool for realism, gained its own life, progressively replacing hand-drawing in natural science research. The primary reason for this was that photography was trusted as an “evidence of presence” more than hand-drawing. This does not only mean the photographer’s presence, but the “species’ presence” as well. Remember Moby-Dick? Only Ishmael survived to tell the tale. The evidence lies only in his story—no photograph could prove the white whale’s existence. For literature, this is not a problem, but if there were no photo of Jane Goodall interacting with her chimpanzee family, we would feel a sense of regret, doubt, and unreliability. Compared to drawings, a photograph can at least be trusted: “This thing was here.”

A rare black-faced spoonbill passing by the Tainan coast, a web spun by a human-faced spider capturing a bulbul, the sight of Yushan violets blooming along a mountain ridge—all such moments affirm their existence.

Photography also offered humans an experience beyond normal vision—a “super-bodily” experience. Vishniac opened a path for microscopic photography, illustrating how it is both “Micro” and “Macro.” In The Way of Butterflies, I wrote about this technique, which renders invisible objects visible: “It captures a mysterious area of the brain, interpreting the ‘intricacy’ and ‘magnitude’ that already resides within these beings. This is true both in substance and in concept.”

Aside from medical and scientific microphotography, there are few photographers in history known specifically for close-up photography. Albert Renger-Patzsch was one of the first to draw my attention. The macro lenses he used were close to those used by today’s photographers. He photographed details of snakes, flowers, bowls, buttons, plants, and even city architecture, almost treating the city as if it were a living organism. His lens seemed perpetually detached, calm but unflinching, simply gazing directly like the unemotional moon.

Renger-Patzsch is regarded as a representative of “New Objectivity” (Neue Sachlichkeit) in photography. His 1928 photobook titled Die Welt ist schön (The World Is Beautiful) exemplifies this approach. Does viewing the world straightforwardly reveal its beauty?

After my military service, I first heard the term “New Objectivity” when I sent a manuscript to Song Ze-Lai, the editor of Taiwan New Literature. In a preface, he described a poet’s work as “New Objectivity.” I later learned this was an essential style in photography. In 1929, the critic Wilhelm Kästner explained this photographic style as follows: “Using a clear and vivid record of objects, bringing close and profound insight, and filtering the abstract structure of objects while emphasizing their material characteristics.”

Such intense proximity to objects through the lens was something no previous art form could achieve, as traditional art still relied on human senses, which are inherently limited. Shortly after graduating, I acquired my first macro lens, and I discovered that adjusting visual perception can indeed change how a photographer sees the world. For instance, many who enjoy photographing plants hold macro lenses close to capture the new leaves of ferns, which often curl like fists before fully extending. With shallow depth of field, these leaves reveal a form of beauty that the naked eye cannot see. Through the lens, we experience a new “objective” encounter with things. Everything becomes lines, shadows, and forms, as if momentarily released from the struggle of survival and transformed into new life. Even creatures that trigger aversion due to evolutionary conditioning (like spiders and snakes) reveal, under a macro lens, the splendor of a snake’s back pattern or a golden orb-weaver’s jewel-like abdomen, allowing us to rediscover the beauty of line and dignity in life.

Not only macro photography, but also other specialized lenses have evolved to capture distances beyond the human eye’s focus, expanding from wide angles to unimaginable distances. The human eye’s capacity is limited, and we cannot truly see each wing beat of a bird. But with advancing shutter speeds, high-speed cameras today can freeze a golden eagle’s gaze as it dives and the shudder of each feather as it adjusts to the wind.

This phenomenon often leaves ecological photographers in a daze once they lower the camera—a unique beauty belonging to the non-digital era. Was there a moment just then when the majestic eagle, through the viewfinder, glanced at me? Each detail, as fleeting as an autumn leaf, is captured. The black box of the camera seems to grant humans a new body, a new imagination. Experienced photographers, even in macro or telescopic worlds never seen with the naked eye, often envision a potential image before lifting the camera—a “preconceived” notion. Through photography, the brain can create extraordinary images, much like how science fiction writers imagine the future or scientists dream of space. It reminds us that the brain is forever our most avant-garde spacecraft.

However, these images, exceeding human visual experience, seem to comment on the human condition, laying bare the sadness of our physical limits.

A photograph can be a declarative, an imperative, or a command. I recall the first time I captured a Purple Emperor butterfly on North Cross Island Highway. The slide was poorly developed because the store’s solution had deteriorated. Yet, years later, I can still point out the exact spot under the cyclobalanopsis tree. That image, like a signpost, remains in my mind; the imperfect slide forever marks my memory, regardless of its clarity.

I also remember aerial photos of Typhoon Morakot’s aftermath, with Nanzihsian Creek nearly buried in debris, reshaping the landscape and erasing villages and roads overnight. Aside from exhumed bodies, all else will turn to carbon over time. I often think of such photos as supplications—an environmental plea from the land to humanity, heard only by those with ears in their hearts.

Every photo I have taken feels like a command: this scene once existed, this being was here. You must never forsake this beautiful world.

Over the years, I have met ecological photographers from different fields, sometimes just passing by in the wild. They might kneel, muddy, in wetlands, face the sea breeze through turbulence, stand under the sun in prairies, or hide in the dense forest, holding their breath… Each memorable ecological photo resembles the white chalk on a blackboard, a breeze over rice paddies, contrails in the blue sky, the rustling of rocks, the color of fallen leaves, the feel of wind moving earth particles, and the heartbeat, subdued yet still racing.

But for Vishniac, who unveiled the microcosmic beauty to humanity, the world was not necessarily beautiful. From the son of a wealthy merchant to a refugee in a foreign land, Vishniac’s pre-war portraits of Jewish communities seem to document the ordinary lives of Jews but conceal a cruel history. For the over 16,000 photos he took (only a few thousand of which survive), he was arrested 11 times. In 1947, his work was finally published under the title A Vanished World.

These photos did not awaken the Jewish people in time, nor, of course, did they awaken the Nazis. Their voices seem to reach out, not backward to the past, but forward, toward us. Those images show that a fragile, dust-laden beautiful world can vanish in the blink of an eye into a forgotten one.

The Jewish experience in World War II left a lasting legacy of thought for future generations, including the compelling intellectual contributions of Hannah Arendt. Arendt, who once had an affair with Heidegger, is one of the few post-war philosophers who emerged from the cycle of revenge to examine the “origin of evil.” In the early 1960s, as a reporter for The New Yorker, she covered the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Eichmann, one of the key players in the Wannsee Conference, which devised the “Final Solution,” inspired Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil.” She observed that Nazi officials and bureaucrats viewed themselves as cogs in the government machinery, dutifully carrying out the orders given by their superiors, void of moral judgment. In her view, evil arises from systems and the ordinary nature of the executors themselves. A cog does not reflect on evil and therefore does not stop it. This argument, in some contexts, hurt the emotional desire for retribution among some survivors. Some Jewish individuals resented Arendt and her reflections on evil.

This concept has become synonymous with Arendt. But some might not know that at Heidelberg University, she studied Saint Augustine’s “Concept of Love” in medieval Catholic scholasticism. The complex interplay between love and evil was the summation of Arendt’s lifetime of thought. Love may stem from God, oneself, one’s people, or even an outsider. It is beyond question that love existed between her and Heidegger, but did it persist even after he succumbed to the Nazis?

I sometimes wonder if Vishniac, in his later life, could be considered a man deprived of love. He devoted himself to his research on microscopic photography as if trying to transform all the “forgotten worlds” into “beautiful worlds” once again. His desire became the desire of many photographers and subtly emerged as a common desire among humankind. Yet, it can be imagined that no matter how advanced photography becomes in the future, no matter what techniques we might use in microscopic photography, we will never be able to find the evil or the love residing within the human body.