Waiting Room, Alishan, Taiwan, 2008

In your artist’s statement you express concern about the danger of travel being reduced to a “shopping list”. Your photography protests this tendency by relishing the scenery or “DNA of a country”, as you put it. How did you come to this deeper appreciation for context?

I think it’s more about trying to see behind the curtain of places. It’s connected with the way I travel — not staying in hotels (even trying to avoid hostels), staying with local people and just looking at the places through their eyes. If you stay on the outskirts of the city, you have a totally different perspective of a place.

I was especially struck by the futuristic Green Bay Resort and San-Zhr Pod Village, which contrasted my preconceived notions of the rural Taiwanese township. Do you set out to defy expectations?

Most of my photographs are very intuitional. When I learned about [San-Zhr], I just took a local bus and went to see it and it was just overwhelming. I didn’t think about it in terms of, Wow, what an amazing photograph it’s going to be. It was more about, Wow, what were those people thinking, and, Why does nobody accept this idea of a crazy resort like that and do it now? I just photograph things that excite me. I never think about the end result.