Steles focuses on the stone steles that have played a crucial role in documenting the history of China. Huang Yi, an imperial bureaucrat, painter, poet, and calligrapher during the late Qing dynasty, inspired the work. Huang Yi made two trips in the late 18th century to document steles mostly located in Shandong Province and Henan Province. Through his travel diaries, paintings, and rubbings, he provided an invaluable record of cultural artefacts that may have disappeared due to neglect.

Taca Hui consulted Huang Yi's diaries, Diary on Visiting Steles near Mount Song and the Luo River and Diary on Visiting Historical Steles from Jining to Tai'an when planning his own trips.

Like Huang Yi, Hui went on expeditions to locate traces of the past preserved on steles. However, while Huang Yi could identify, describe, and catalog actual examples, Hui had to be content with inscriptions that were mostly erased or existed only in a fragmentary state. Nevertheless, he persevered in preserving whatever he could with the use of silver barium sulfide photographic paper. Hui’s images have a forlorn and timeless beauty that are simultaneously specific and evocative of the relentless passing of time due to the intrinsic qualities of the photographic paper.

Hui follows in the footsteps of Huang Yi and contributes to the ongoing dialogue through his own poetic insights. Huang Yi showed his paintings to friends before his death, and copies of the rubbings were widely circulated. Hui’s images are not additions to the scholarly record, but they continue the legacy of Huang Yi and contribute to preserving cultural artifacts for generations to come.

About the Artist

Taca Hui is a Chinese Fine Art Photographer from Qingdao, Shandong Province, China. Having studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (2003) and photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology (2007-2008). Hui’s work has been featured in countless exhibitions both in China and the United States such as the Chambers Fine Art (2011), the Three Shadows Photography Award Exhibition (2011) and the Lianzhou Photo Festival (2010). He has won numerous awards and accolades such as the Top 20 Chinese Contemporary Young Photographer Award (2011), the China New Photography Award at the Xiaobing Xu National Photography Contest (2010), and the Photographer of Year Award at the Lianzhou International Photography Festival (2010).