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I am A-Bang, and A-Hsien is my older brother, a year ahead of me. When we were children, we were often mistaken for twins, to the point that even now, when I look at old photos, I can’t tell who is who.

Because our parents were busy, when A-Hsien was two, he was sent to live with our grandmother in Chiayi. When I turned six, my parents divorced, and I, too, moved to Chiayi. It was perhaps then that our characters and destinies began to diverge.

A-Hsien had an incredible gift for drawing. Our house was filled with his art awards, and as a child, I was often consumed by jealousy, seeing him as my rival. Yet, as we grew older, he began to profoundly influence me. When he was fourteen, he showed me the film Ashes of Time by Wong Kar-wai. At first, I thought it was a terrible film, but he kept watching it over and over. I asked him what was so special about it, and he simply said, “It ’s cinematic.” It wasn’t until I turned nineteen that I finally understood what he meant.

At eighteen, I decided to pursue a career in filmmaking. I asked A-Hsien about his future plans, and his casual reply was, “I’ll figure it out when I get into a car accident.”

After completing his military service, he moved out and cut off contact with the family for three years, surviving by doing manual labor. I always thought of him as a genius, someone who had everything figured out. But whenever I asked him about his goals, his vague responses made me feel like I was winning, like I had beaten him.

Then one day, he did get into a car accident.

While he was in the hospital, he asked me to go to his apartment to pick up some medicine. That’s when I discovered his room was stacked with medicine bottles: for depression, insomnia, epilepsy, and autonomic dysfunction. I was shocked to realize his world was nothing like I had imagined.

Afterward, he quit his manual labor job and moved back in with our mother to begin psychiatric treatment. One day, he told me that while sitting on the toilet, everything suddenly went black, and he felt as though death was coming. Then, out of nowhere, light returned.

He said to me, “I just want to live well now, even though living is so painful.”

Hearing that, I let go of my jealousy and competitive spirit towards him.

I suggested documenting his life, and he agreed. I wanted to record his lonely struggles and the painful act of surviving, to contrast with my own pursuit of worldly success. Perhaps he is the other side of me, and I, the other side of him.

These days, A-Hsien has gained some weight, and there’s a dry smudge on his mouth that never goes away. Photographing him in this state made me feel cruel. Is he my work, or is this just my way of understanding him?

Was it illness that caused his life to unravel, or did his unraveling life lead to illness? What were the forces and reasons that pushed us as brothers toward two completely different worlds of adulthood? What is the true bond between us? Through photographing A-Hsien, I seek to understand these complex questions.

Born from the Same Root is presented as a gatefold book, with the left side dedicated to the photographer, Cai Ding-Bang (A-Bang), and the right side to his brother (A-Hsien). The sequence of images moves from childhood family photos to the vastly different lives they lead as adults. As you turn the pages, the dividing line continually separates the two brothers, symbolizing how, despite sharing the same origin, they have developed into two completely different people. A-Bang chases after worldly success through artistic creation, while A-Hsien, working manual jobs, battles depression and delves into a deeper internal search for meaning. Yet, despite seemingly moving toward opposite extremes, the connection of their shared bloodline continues to pull them towards each other.
This work was initially published as a limited-edition handmade photobook by Shuhezi, with only 100 copies made. It won the Singapore Photography Book Award and was shortlisted for the Arles Photobook Award. In 2024, Born from the Same Root received the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation Photobook Award, becoming the first Taiwanese creator to win this prestigious prize.

This is the second edition, limited to 500 copies.

About the Photographer
Tsai Ting Bang, Born in Taoyuan in 1999, of Taiwanese-Vietnamese descent, A-Bang has a primary school education and began his self-taught journey at the age of twelve. His works primarily focus on image and book-based creations. His other works include Mother and Father and Beautiful Aunt Jin Yun.