John Thomson, who traveled to and photographed Taiwan, published his travel memoir The Straits of Malacca, Indo-China and China or Ten years Travels, Adventures and Residence Abroad in 1875. He wrote: “I have endeavored to impart to the reader some share in the pleasure which I myself experience in my wanderings; but, at the same time, it has been my care so as to hold the mirror up to the gaze…” This “mirror” here is a metaphor for photography and the “reader” refers to his western readers. In other words, Thomson’s mirror echoes visual coloniality. The control of the image and its photographic techniques in the 19th century during the Japanese Occupation period precisely reflects the presentation of "domestication of the others" and "self-idealization" of the image produced in Taiwan. If Thomson’s narrative reveals the traces of colonial desire, the images reflected in his lens are the desire of the photographer. But these images allow for the colonized to gaze back, to more deeply draw connections between the relation of colonialism and control over photographic techniques and culture. This allows for the establishment of multilayered dialogue between the "to gaze", "being gazed” and "to gaze the being gazed".