Chang focuses on the abstract concepts of alienation and connection. "The Chain", a collection of portraits made in a mental asylum in Taiwan, was shown at Venice Biennale (2001) and the São Paulo Art Biennial (2002). The nearly life-sized photographs of pairs of patients chained together resonate with Chang's look at the less visible bonds of marriage.
At São Paulo Art Biennial he was involved in the Thomann controversy.
Chang has treated marital ties in two books—I Do I Do I Do (2001), a collection of images depicting alienated grooms and brides in Taiwan, and in Double Happiness (2005), a depiction of the business of selling brides in Vietnam. The ties of family and of culture are also the themes of a project begun in 1992. For 21 years, Chang has photographed and videoed the bifurcated lives of Chinese immigrants in New York's Chinatown, along with those of their wives and families back home in Fujian. Still a work in progress, China Town was hung at the National Museum of Singapore in 2008[2] as part of a mid-career survey and at Venice Biennale (2011) as well as at International Center of Photography, New York (2012). Chang's investigation of the ties that bind one person to another draws on his own divided immigrant experience in the United States. In 2014, he was named one of the "30 Most Influential Photographers in Asia" by IPA.[3] Other Taiwanese photographers who made the list included Chang Chao-Tang (張照堂) and Chang Tsai (張才).
