He reimagined his parents’ wedding portrait, with their roles reversed

EDITOR’S NOTE: In Snap , we look at the power of a single photograph, chronicling stories about how both modern and historical images have been made.

When Liu Hsing-Yu asked his parents to swap wedding outfits and be photographed among a sea of plastic roses, he didn’t realize he’d be embarking on a 17-year-long (and counting) body of work.

In 2009, he was studying for his art degree and had recently come out to them as a gay man — both of which they struggled to understand. In fact, as he recalled from his home in Taiwan, they initially thought that the former had caused the latter. At the time, Taiwan was still a decade away from legalizing same-sex marriage.

Liu had the idea to subvert his parents’ roles after finding his father’s wedding suit from 1984. Given their traditional beliefs around gender and families, he was surprised when his mother said yes. His father took more persuading, but he eventually agreed, too.

The resulting portrait was one of the first images in Liu’s series “My Parents,” which he has exhibited numerous times over the years, including the latest presentation at the UK’s Bristol Photo Festival, which opened recently. He is also publishing a book of the photographs.

In the reimagined wedding portrait, his mother appears in his father’s suit and his father wears a secondhand wedding dress. They pose on their family’s farmlands, where Liu’s grandfather once grew taros, rice and mangoes. It’s near Taiwan’s southern port city of Kaohsiung, where Liu was born.

“The relationships between these objects and the place were important to me,” he explained. “The farmland and the truck are connected to work and physical labor. The wedding dress and suit carry ideas about marriage and how men and women are expected to behave. Putting them together in one image made these familiar things feel slightly out of place.”

At the time, his father, a truck driver, was nearing retirement and anxious about the transition. His mother was planning to find new work to support the family. Through their poses, with his father resting and his mother assuming a more assertive role, Liu wanted to reflect their changing dynamic. He thought about how gender roles inform our everyday responsibilities: “Who should earn money, who should provide care and who is allowed to show vulnerability?” he said.

Together, the photographer and his parents collected the artificial roses used in the photograph from wedding banquets they had recently attended, and Liu said the faux blooms represented some of the feelings he was grappling with.

“I imagined myself as one of those plastic flowers: perhaps beautiful, but with no roots in the soil,” he described. “I could have a place at a wedding banquet, yet I felt unable to fulfill the traditional expectations of marriage, having children and carrying on the family line. For me, the flowers hold that tension I felt as a gay man facing my family’s expectations at the time.”

Why this photographer wants everyone to kiss

Across “My Parents,” Liu explores ideas around companionship, intimacy, aging, gender expectations and cultural norms. In the beginning, Liu said each photograph could take months of discussion and conflict. For a long time, he didn’t know exactly why his father had agreed to take part in the work. His mother’s reasoning was more straightforward — she loved the besuited Taiwanese singer Fong Fei-fei and it was an opportunity to emulate her. But in 2014, when Liu invited his parents to speak alongside him during an artist talk, he was moved by his father’s words: He felt that wearing a wedding dress was a “low price” to pay to support his son, Liu recalled.

“I do not assume that agreeing to be photographed means they accept all my ideas. But their willingness to make something with me means a great deal,” he said.

Their differences have also influenced how he views art-making. “(My) participants have their own views of the work, which may differ from mine,” he said. “We can make a photograph together and gradually build understanding through that process.”

Since he began making the work, life has changed for Taiwan’s LGBTQ community. Same-sex marriage was legalized in 2019, and the social climate, in turn, has become more accepting, though there are still generational differences, Liu said. Collaborating with his parents over such a long period has fundamentally changed their relationship as well. Today, Liu is married and all four of them live together (in Taiwan, like much of Asia, it is common for newlywed couples to live with one partner’s parents). He has begun traveling with his parents for the series as well, taking them to Thailand to celebrate Songkran, the water festival marking the New Year in the Theravada Buddhist calendar. Last year, they also joined him for two weeks during his artist residency in Kumamoto, Japan.

He hopes that his work “encourages people to look again at images of family that have become so familiar that we no longer question them,” he said. As his parents age, he has thought more about care and the wellbeing of older LGBTQ people.

“I hope discussions of gender equality can also address how we grow old, who cares for us, and whether we can live freely with the people we love,” he said. “To me, these are very tangible aspects of everyday life.”

编者按：在《快照》一书中，我们探讨了一张照片的力量，记录了现代和历史照片的制作故事。

刘星宇要求父母交换结婚礼服，并在塑料玫瑰花海中拍照时，他并没有意识到自己将开启一段长达 17 年（而且还在继续）的创作历程。

2009年，他正在攻读艺术学位，不久前向他们坦白了自己的同性恋身份——这两件事他们都难以理解。事实上，正如他在台湾的家中回忆的那样，他们最初认为前者导致了后者。当时，台湾距离同性婚姻合法化还有十年之久。

刘在找到父亲1984年的结婚礼服后，萌生了颠覆父母角色的想法。考虑到他们传统的性别和家庭观念，母亲的同意让他感到意外。父亲则需要更多劝说，但最终也同意了。

这幅肖像作品是刘的“我的父母”系列作品中的首批作品之一，多年来他多次展出该系列作品，包括最近在英国布里斯托尔摄影节上的最新一次展出。他还将出版一本包含这些照片的画册。

在这幅重新构思的结婚照中，刘的母亲身着父亲的西装，父亲则穿着一件二手婚纱。他们站在自家的农田里，刘的祖父曾在这片土地上种植芋头、水稻和芒果。这里靠近台湾南部港口城市高雄，刘的出生地就在那里。

他解释说：“这些物品与地点之间的关系对我来说很重要。农田和卡车与工作和体力劳动相关。婚纱和西装则承载着关于婚姻以及男女行为规范的观念。将它们放在同一幅画面中，反而让这些熟悉的事物显得有些格格不入。”

当时，他的父亲是一名卡车司机，即将退休，对即将到来的转变感到焦虑。他的母亲也正计划找一份新工作来养家糊口。刘通过父母的姿态——父亲放松休息，母亲则扮演着更为强势的角色——来反映他们之间不断变化的关系。他思考着性别角色如何影响我们日常的责任：“谁应该赚钱养家，谁应该照顾家人，谁又有资格展现脆弱的一面？”他说道。

摄影师和他的父母一起从他们最近参加的婚宴上收集了照片中使用的仿真玫瑰，刘说这些人造花代表了他正在努力应对的一些感受。

“我把自己想象成一朵塑料花：或许美丽，但却没有根扎在土壤里，”他描述道。“我或许能在婚宴上占有一席之地，但我却觉得自己无法满足婚姻、生育子女和延续家族血脉的传统期望。对我而言，这些花承载着我当时作为一名同性恋者面对家庭期望时所感受到的那种矛盾与挣扎。”

为什么这位摄影师想让每个人都亲吻

在《我的父母》系列作品中，刘家辉探讨了陪伴、亲密关系、衰老、性别期待和文化规范等主题。刘家辉说，起初，每张照片的拍摄都可能需要数月的讨论和争论。很长一段时间，他都不明白父亲为何同意参与这项创作。母亲的理由则更为直接——她喜欢身着西装的台湾歌手方菲菲，而这正是一个模仿她的机会。但在2014年，当刘家辉邀请父母与他一同出席一场艺术家讲座时，父亲的一番话深深打动了他：刘家辉回忆说，父亲觉得穿上婚纱来支持儿子是“微不足道的代价”。

“我并不认为同意拍照就意味着他们接受我的所有想法。但他们愿意和我一起创作，这对我来说意义重大，”他说。

他们的差异也影响了他对艺术创作的看法。“（我的）参与者对作品有他们自己的看法，这可能与我的看法不同，”他说。“我们可以一起拍摄照片，并在这个过程中逐渐建立理解。”

自他开始创作以来，台湾LGBTQ群体的生活发生了变化。刘先生表示，2019年同性婚姻合法化后，社会氛围也变得更加包容，尽管仍然存在代际差异。与父母长期合作也从根本上改变了他们之间的关系。如今，刘先生已婚，他们一家四口住在一起（在台湾，如同亚洲许多地区一样，新婚夫妇与一方父母同住是很常见的）。他还开始带着父母一起旅行，进行系列创作，例如带他们去泰国庆祝泼水节——佛教上座部历法中的新年。去年，他们也曾陪伴他在日本熊本进行为期两周的艺术家驻留项目。

他说，他希望自己的作品“能鼓励人们重新审视那些我们习以为常、不再质疑的家庭形象”。随着父母年迈，他开始更多地思考老年LGBTQ人群的照护和福祉问题。

他说：“我希望关于性别平等的讨论也能涉及我们如何老去、谁来照顾我们，以及我们能否与我们所爱的人自由地生活在一起。对我来说，这些都是日常生活中非常具体的问题。”