.
News
of the field
|
DUKE UNIVERSITY
| New
(September 7, 2008):
Duke University has put together an extremely
valuable resource earlier this year, namely, the Collection of Sidney D. Gamble
Photographs. "From 1908 to
1932, Sidney Gamble (1890-1968) visited China four times, traveling
throughout the country to collect data for social-economic surveys and
to photograph urban and rural life, public events, architecture,
religious statuary, and the countryside. A sociologist, renowned China
scholar, and avid amateur photographer, Gamble used some of the
pictures to illustrate his monographs. The Sidney D. Gamble Photographs
digital collection marks the first comprehensive public presentation of
this large body of work that includes photographs of Korea, Japan,
Hawaii, San Francisco, and Russia. The site currently features
photographs dated between 1917 and 1932; the 1908 photographs will be
digitized and uploaded as part of future additions to the site."
It
should be noted that this collection comprises almost 5000 images, for
the most part related to China. The images are described (and therefore
searchable) following the annotations given by Gamble himself. This
presents a bit of a problem in my view, as a search for the term
"Suzhou" (note the Pinyin romanization!) for example retrieves images
which, geographically speaking, have nothing to do with Suzhou the
town, nor with the environs of Suzhou, or perhaps even with Jiangsu
province at large. One has to tread with caution, but once thus
cautioned, truly pioneering work can be accomplished by using just this
particular and monumental archive. And did I mention that the image
files are downloadable as full resolution JPGs (aka ~4000 by 3000
pixels)? |
Archive
of
Asian-American
Photographs
made
available
at UC Berkeley
| New
(September 6, 2008):
Under the headline UC Berkeley organizes Asian
American photo archive
an article by Kristin Bender was just published in the Oakland Triibune
on Sept. 6, stating in its two opening paragraphs that "The
Ethnic Studies Library at UC Berkeley has recently completed organizing
and archiving what is thought to be one of the largest Asian American
photograph collections held in a public
institution worldwide, university officials said. With a
$180,000 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records
Commission, more than 200,000 photos taken by professional photographer
Kem Lee, documenting San Francisco's Chinatown from the 1940s to the
1980s, were sorted, labeled, cataloged and neatly placed in Manila
folders." Besides the Kem Lee collection, a
second major photo collection, namely by photographer Henry Woon,
awaits preservation treatment and cataloging. "The [Woon]
archive contains more than 240,000 images of Asian Americans in San
Francisco and the East Bay from the 1950s to about 2000." | 
| New
(July 28, 2008):
The National
Gallery of Australia recently opened an exhibit
on Asia-Pacific Photography 1840s - 1940s, entitled Picture Paradise.
From the exhibit web site:
"This is the first
exhibition to survey the history of photography of our region
– from India and Sri Lanka, Southeast and East Asia,
Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands to the west coast of
North America. It features pioneer local photographers as well as
Europeans working in the region. The exhibition reveals the rich
heritage and the many outstanding achievements of the first century of
photography in the Asia–Pacific
region.
This significant gathering of over four hundred
original photographs and albums includes gem-like daguerreotype
portraits, mass-produced views and portraits on paper made possible by
the revolutionary wet-plate and dry-plate glass negative-positive
process, and prints from the modern era of small format film cameras
and photojournalism."
Judging from the well-done and resourceful web site,
this exhibit is well worth a personal visit. It is open until November
9, 2008.
|
 | New (June 11, 2008):
On my Zenfolio site earlier this month I put up a number of
galleries with photographs of various aspects of the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution 文化大革命 in China
(generally dated 1966-1976). Much has been written about this traumatic
segment of China's recent past, but - with the exception of the
legacies of Li Zhensheng and Weng Naiqiang - the subject (for
very complex and difficult reasons) is not well covered visually. For
example, in An Anthology of Chinese Photography 1957-2000
(1957-2000 中国摄影作品精选), the ten years between 1964 and 1974 are not
represented at all, and the years 1974 to 1979 display mostly Mao and
Model Operas (yangbanxi 样板戏). It is evident that in many instances and
ways, the CR is still very much a taboo subject in China itself.
With
the exception of Chang Song's striking images, the galleries offered
here reflect parts of my own holdings on the subject. There are at present five
galleries (two more will follow soon), with the
following content:
1. The anti-Kong anti-Lin
campaign in Qufu 批孔批林运动 - 决不充许开历史倒车 (27 photographs,
April 1974)
2. Sports and physical education
发展体育运动 - 增强人民体质 (15 photographs, November 1971)
3.
The nation-wide educational campaign in the mechanical
and life sciences 教育战线生气勃勃 (21 photographs, April 1974)
4.
China's navy and archaeology (sic!) on the Xisha Islands
西沙群岛
(20 photographs, approx. early 1974)
5. China's heavy industry
in the early 1970s (coming soon)
6. Drills and practices of
the Peoples Liberation Army PLA in the early 1970s (14 photographs,
coming soon)
7. A small selection of Chang
Song's work covering the late 1960s as exhibited in the
Caochangdi Art District in Beijing in 2007
|
| New (June 11, 2008):
If anybody doubted it in recent years, eBay remains a
wonderful source of materials and insights. Historical photographs of
China, Japan, and, to a lesser degree, Korea, are listed with
great regularity. In many instances, complete albums of
sailors or soldiers serving in the Pacific theatre come up for
auction. Likewise, photographic collections of members of the Japanese
military serving in China/Manchuria, not to speak of the myriad
individual postcards and photographs of anonymous provenance. Recently
a unique batch of late
19th century albumen photographs of southwestern China was
sold for $3500 (item #180244923196). As far as I am aware, the
photographer is unknown, and the existence of said images had not
entered the public record. For those researchers interested in the
early stages of the medium in China, such a discovery is like striking
gold. One has exactly seven days to view and analyse the images before
they are being sold to the highest bidder, usually a private
party (as opposed to a public institution like a museum or a library).
Another item (#380013677422), still current in fact, is Dr. Rudolf Mell's personal oeuvre
of photographs from southern China, specifically, the area
around Guangzhou (Canton), where Dr.Mell resided and worked as
a botanist for over a decade. The seller is asking for $5500 for the
entire collection, but also entertains offers.
A
number of years ago I published an article on how a small collection of original
photographs of the 1868 Burlingame mission to the US
faired on eBay. For those interested, this
article can be found here (in PDF). |
Gallery
1 (German provenance)
Gallery
2 (Russian provenance)
| New (May 23, 2008):
It may be un-timely in the wake of the Wenchuan Earthquake disaster and
the EV71 outbreak, but here we go...The so-called Manchurian (Pneumonic) Plague of 1910-11, a
fiasco in the history of public health in China, came at a time when
the imperial court in Beijing was at its weakest and the Republican
Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen hadn't occurred yet. With a mortality
rate of almost 100%, it's outbreak would claim the life of ca. 45,000
to 60,000 residents of Harbin and environs. Not only did the outbreak
occur at a crucial moment in Chinese history, it took place in
a geopolitically highly contested area: Russia, Japan and China all
laid claim to controlling this particular region.
Photographic
documentation of the Manchurian Plague is almost
non-existant. Through good fortune (and guanxi),
I am able to offer two sets of images depicting the course of events.
Taken together, these two sets constitute the most comprehensive visual
account of the Manchurian Plague available anywhere.
The
first set
is of German provenance. I acquired these original photographs about a
year ago. They are captioned "Die Pest in China 1911" (which does not
require translation I believe). I assume they were taken some time
between January and March, 1911.
The
second installment of photographs depicting the very grim
realities of the Manchurian Plague is of Russian provenance. The files
were generously provided by Mr. Spike Cook in Florida, the owner of
this extremely rare album. The Russian captions still await
translation. Note:
Both galleries contain very
graphic images! |
Acrobat
performer | New
(May 6, 2008): On-line resource: The Chinese-Australian Historical
Images in Australia (CHIA) database. This resource "is a
catalogue of historical images of Chinese, Chinese immigrants and their
descendants held in Australia. It primarily draws on the photographic
holdings of the Chinese Museum but also includes photographs from other
online archives, publications and private family collections." And
"CHIA also includes the beginnings of an encyclopaedia of
Chinese-Australian history, complete with bibliography, aimed at
providing contextual information for database images." The
image files are available on fair-use basis, i.e., "Images
in the database can be reproduced for research or study purposes,
school or university projects or in family histories." Strangely, some
photographs, while described and cataloged, are not available on-line
for viewing. In quite a number of cases, links to images are broken.
Regarding the themes of the images, there is "a strong focus
on photographs from the nineteenth and early twentieth century and also
particularly subject matter such as weddings, sports, archways and
processions, photographs of particular families."
Access to the CHIA. |
Huachen
Auctions华辰拍卖
Beijing
April
29, 2008 | New (March 28, 2008):
This is the 2008 Spring
Auction of Huachen's
Photographic Division.
As with previous auctions, Huachen put out a very interesting and
well-produced auction catalog. The catalog contains hundreds of
well-researched and annotated photographs of such traditional masters
of the medium like Lang Jingshan, Ah Fong, Thomas Child, James
Ricalton, etc. Surprisingly, a small batch (22 prints) of architectural
photographs taken by Liang Sicheng 梁思成 and Liu Dunzhen 刘墩桢 are for sale
as well. The most interesting collections in my personal view are,
however, those from more recent years; the images by Yu Quanxing 于全兴 of
his Mothers-in-Poverty series
(Guizhou, Yunnan 2001-2006) for example are very striking; likewise,
the photographs of political rallies and campaigns from the 1960s and
70s are important visual documents reminding us of a level of
politization of the individual no longer replicable nor desirable. The
accompanying short essays by Li Mei 李媚 on the subject of the political
nature of photography in China are informative and detailed. Work by
Cui Haiming 崔海鸣 (2007), Lu Di 卢笛 (2007), Ma Liang 马良 (2006) etc. bring
the collector into close contact with contemporary themes. The catalog
is supplemented with a useful section of artists' and photographers'
short bios, in English language. The link to the auction house and the
items for sale can be found here. |  | New (March 28, 2008): Chinese life in American cities
has been documented in a number of visual and textual studies over the
years; Arnold Genthe is perhaps the most prominent visual documenter of
San Francisco's Chinatown,
covering the years shortly after his arrival in 1895; the selection of
photographs by an unknown photographer offered here
in my Zenfolio Gallery under the title Chinese Customs - Indelible
Photographs was assembled into a small booklet
by the (German?) publishers Hoffmann and Wittemann and published in 1892.
This small collection of views includes images of a Dragon "Procession"
(Dragon Dance it should be really), offerings to the dead at a
western-style cemetary; a girl with bound feet (see left), a funeral
train, a fortune teller, a joss house, etc. Many of these themes would
be covered by Genthe later on in the first decade of
the 1900s again. |  | New (March 13, 2008): As a repeat of Vivienne Esders successful
auction
of historical
photographs of China and adjoining regions, another auction is planned
for March 19, 2008 (at Yann le Moeul, Salle 9, rue Drouot,
2pm). This auction includes "the
Collection of photographic Archives by the diplomat and explorer
AUGUSTE FRANCOIS, French consul in China from 1896 to 1904. [...] The
photographs, typescripts, glass plates and folioscopes proposed in this
sale have been kept by Auguste François' descendants until
today." Also listed is important, original work by John
Thomson, Milton
Miller, Saunders
and others. Types of materials on offer are stereoscopes, albumen
prints, aristotype prints, panoramas (of Yunnan-fu, i.e. Kunming),
tirages argentique (Silver halide prints), and a number of book
publications such as by Donald Mennie (his Grandeur of the Gorges),
Heinz von Perckhammer (the rare volume Edle
Nacktheit in China), etc. Click here to download the catalog of
items on offer (66 well-produced pages, in PDF format, ca.10MB) |  | New (March 12, 2008):
In case this resource is unfamiliar, I need to point towards a Chinese
site
dedicated to discussions and on-line exhibitions of historical Chinese
photography. This is a rather comprehensive resource on all aspects of
the media's impact in China, from the late Qing period all the
way into the early 1980s, when the country as a whole finally
started to embark on the windy path of profound economic, social and
urban transformation. |
A
word or two on
Two Exhibitions
of Historical Photographs
in Beijing | New (January 21, 2008):
The China Daily on January 18, 2008, under the heading Capturing a Frame of Mind, reports
on an exhibition of Chinese
historical family photographs and family-specific photo albums
which were curated for an exhibition at Peking University.
The oldest photograph dates from 1898. Depicted are not only the
entourage of famous political and cultural icons (Zhu De, Mao Zedong,
Ren Bishi, Li Xiaomin and others), but also "people of all sorts of
political, economic, social and ethnical backgrounds", a fact which -
according to Bi Chunping, one of the key exhibit organizers - allows
many intimate glimpses into the private lifes of ordinary
citizens.
Another
institution in Beijing, Beijing
Normal University, was recently celebrating its 90th
anniversary, also with an exhibition of historical photographs. This
particular exhibition, or, to be precise, one single picture, caused
quite a stir. It was taken on Tiananmen Square on August 18, 1966,
showing a student of said university by the name of Song
Binbin ceremoniously handing Chairman Mao a red badge, the signifier of
the Red Guards. According to the photographer capturing the
moment, the
Chairman is said to have asked for the student's name, and, deeming
Binbin too genteel for the times that would lie ahead, answered that
her name should be Song Yaowu 宋要武. The rest, as they say, is
history, as On Mao’s 114th Birthday, [the]
Past Catches Up to [a] Former Red Guard Leader. |
Paiwan | New (January 10, 2008):
Here is a new, very well-constructed resource of pre-war
photographs of Taiwan. Called the Gerald
Warner Taiwan Image Collection,
after a US consul's photographic impressions of urban and
rural
life in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule, the collection in fact
culls images not only from the original Warner Collection, but also
from a great variety of mainly Japanese sources. The oldest of these
referenced sources (the Taiwan
banzoku zufu 臺灣蕃族圖譜) dates back to 1918; while the most
recent material used dates to 2007 (issue of the National Geographic).
From
the introduction: "The subjects represented are wide-ranging, including
clothing, arboriculture, urban structures, agriculture, religious
rituals, topography, highways, parks, and more. These digitized images
have been researched and annotated to serve as a web-based encyclopedia
of colonial Taiwan's material culture."
This
on-line resource
makes extensive and intelligent use of metadata; images can be either
browsed or searched by various attributes (location, title, etc.). A
zoom-in function provides high resolution image detail. Altogether a
very useful resource for those interested in Taiwan's rural
and
social conditions under Japanese colonial rule. |  | New (December 9, 2007): After
much research and some deliberation I finally decided to put together a
gallery of early
artistic photography of Nudes in China.
As it happened, the story starts in the year 1915, when the
Shanghai Fine Arts Academy 上海美术专科学校 is advertising for young
women
to
model in a drawing class, the first of its kind applied to the human
figure in Republican China. The very first photographs of nudes,
then, were in fact taken within the setting of the classroom
and
the college, creating rather a stir when released (or leaked) to the
public. Classes resumed eventually, and the nude body continued to be
painted and drawn and, starting in the late 1920s, photographed
artfully by, for
example, Long Chin-san 郎静山 (Lang
Jingshan),
Heinz von Perckhammer and un-named others. Chinese print media
(including the advertisement industry) picked up on the theme
and
incorporated the Nude in their own fashion from the early 1930s onward.
The gallery can be found on my Zenfolio site here. |
Huachen Auctions
华辰拍卖 
Beijing
December 3, 2007 | New (November 28, 2007):
The photography branch of Huachen Auctions Co.
for this year's autumn auction has collected a large number of
interesting photographs which are being sold on December 3
in Beijing at the Jingguang Center 京广中心. Huacheng was so kind as to
furnish me with a catalog of the items for sale, and it is again a very
impressive panorama of various important stages in the history of
photography in China and abroad. I must praise Huachen for paying
special
attention to two aspects of photography, namely the coverage
of
everyday life in China in the 70s to the early 90s (there are some
iconic images
to be had here), and the inclusion (again) of contemporary, should I
say: avant-garde art photography, such as the intriguing work of Lu
Jun 陆军 and Yang Yongliang 杨泳梁. Highlights of the category of historical
photographs (besides a whole series of images by Lang Jingshan) include
a portrait by Saunders of Shen Baozhen 沈葆桢 (15.000-30.000RMB), and a
Yamamoto print of Puyi & his bride Wanrong, both in the company
of
Puyi's English tutor R.F. Johnston (180.000-200.000RMB). A (reprinted)
article discussing documentary photography in the cultural, political
and "ethical" (伦理) context of contemporary China by Bao Kun is well
worth the read. It places the start of the genre into the years
1985/86, which is a tad vexing when compared to the beginnings of the
same genre in the west. Recent American photography is represented by
Annie Leibovitz (her
famous John
Lennon/Yoko Ono photograph), Yousuf Karsh, Tom Kelly (Marylin Monroe
on Red Velvet) and others. Click
on the image to the left to go to Huachen's web site.
| 
Maggs Publication | New (November 12, 2007): Titus
Boeder, the author of Japanese
Photography from the
pre-War Period: Photobooks & Prints (Maggs, London
2007, ISBN 978-0-901953-14-8, £35), is an old friend of mine.
Working for Maggs Bros., Ltd, Purveyors of Rare Books &
Manuscripts
by Appointment of her Majesty the Queen (of England), he is also
uniquely qualified to compile this annotated and illustrated
bibliography of "135 titles comprising over 1000 books and magazines
spanning the rich history of the most challenging period of Japanese
artistic history." As some of the challenges Japan was facing in this
period had to do with China (military challenges, no less), there is
much in here which is of relevance to the collector or researcher of
things Chinese. In fact a rather sizeable amount of the titles Titus so
competently describes deal with Manchuria (Manchukuo) and
other
parts of China. I would recommend this bibliography to anyone working
in the area of visual arts in East Asia. Note that the items listed are
all for sale, as a batch, for, well, an undisclosed amount. |
CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT | New (October 29, 2007): At
the upcoming conference on 'China'
on Display: Past and
Present Practices of Selecting, Exhibiting and Viewing Chinese Visual
and Material Culture (Leiden University School of
Management, Holland, Dec. 6-8, 2007), Oliver Moore will give a talk on Art staged for the Camera in
Qing and Republican China. The
symposium, focusing "on China as a case study to examine how the visual
production of non-European cultures has been represented in exhibitions
and museum displays", is open to the public. | 
Daoist
priest (ca. 1930) | New (September 28, 2007): As
is quite well known I believe, one of my oldest interests in China
relates to Daoism (or Taoism, as it is still used in much of today's
literature on the subject). I recently went on an explorative mission
to locate and identify historical photographs having to do with Daoist
practice, sites and rites. Elusive as the Dao is in general, this
proved to be the expectedly tricky journey. While the journey is far
from over, in the meantime I would like to present some preliminary
findings, culled from a variety of sources, such as original
photographs found in China, western literature (travelogues mostly),
and photographic albums in my possession (Perckhammer, Siren, etc.). I
will add more materials over time - not all images I see in sources
like the newspaper Beiyang
huabao 北洋画报 for
example are of the quality I'd like. See my Zenfolio gallery on Early
Photographs of Daoist Sites and Practice. | Exhibiton announcement | New (September 14, 2007):
Please be aware of the upcoming exhibtion entitled Picturing China,
1870-1950: Photographs from British collections, held at the Brunei Gallery,
School of Oriental and African Studies,
London. The exhibit
opens October 16 and closes Dec. 15, 2007. It is part of an ongoing
digital archives project edited by Prof. Robert Bickers with
the project title Historical
Photographs of China. As the project web site
states, the "photographs archived [here]
come from the collections of a Chinese diplomat, foreign businessmen,
staff of the administrations in the Chinese treaty ports, missionaries,
and officials of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service."
| Huachen Auctions 华辰拍卖
Beijing
June
25, 2007 | New (September 14, 2007):
It is quite amazing what one can learn from an auction
catalog. I have in front of me the Huachen
Auctions catalog referring to the Spring 2007 Auction, and
it is an editorial masterpiece, featuring almost 750 annotated,
well-presented items for sale, a number of appendices, and introductory
articles on a variety of subjects. For example, my good friend Tong
Bingxue compiled a very useful article on
collecting photographs, discussing
the value increase of historical photographs over
the past years.
The catalog, besides featuring work
of western photographers (which is now also collected in China), is
otherwise a very useful tour through various stages of the photographic
profession in China's history, all the way up to the present in fact,
with modern work by Xu Yong 徐勇, Daniel
Lee 李小镜, Shu Yang 舒阳 et al. Of great interest, however, are
the hitherto much neglected und unresearched decades of the 50s to the
70s, with Hou Bo 侯波, Mao's official (female) "court photographer"
occupying a prime position. |  | New (September 14, 2007):
The Dutch International
Institute for Asian Studies, in its latest Newsletter
(#44, Summer 2007) addresses Asia's
Colonial Photographies. Oliver Moore is the author of the
article on "Photography in China: a global medium locally
appropriated".
The online version of the newsletter can be found mounted on the IIAS
web site. |
| Pulling
the curtain aside: The visual documentation of Japan's war
crimes in China and the continued battle over who owns what
piece of history | New
(July 20, 2007): China.org.cn has
reported the discovery of a photo album of Japanese war criminals.
From the web site: "The album contains well-preserved photographs of
150 high-ranking war criminals, including Takebe Robuzo, who served in
the general affairs department of the state council of the puppet
Manchuria government in northeast China between 1940 and 1945."
This announcement ties in with a little-known discussion (in fact, a
confrontation) between Chinese and Japanese authorities over the
display of historical photographs documenting Japanese war crimes in
many of China's museums. The Chinese position was expressed by Foreign
Ministry spokesperson Qin Gang in the following statement: "The
photographs record the horrors of the period to remember history. They
are there not to continue hatred, but to prevent tragedies from
recurring." For more on this discussion, see here. |
 | New
(July 13, 2007): The name Joseph
Skarbek may not be familiar to many, but the Centre Culturel
Francais in Beijing recently mounted an exhibit of photographs taken by
this French railroad engineer in Henan province between
1906 and 1909. I visited this exhibition and was very much
intrigued by the quality of the photographs and by the scope of themes
on display: a) Customs and daily life; b) Chinese historical
architecture; c) The Bian - Luo railway line under construction.
Pictures of this exhibition can be viewed on my Zenfolio
Joseph Skarbek gallery site. |
Hong
Lei 1997 | New
(May 13, 2007): Would
you pay over 20.000 USD for a single photograph by Lang Jingshan (Long
Ching-shan)? Some collectors do, as can be seen here at this Chinese auction site, (Note: loads a bit slow, in
Chinese language only) where historical and new photographs were sold
very recently. Incidentally, the two most expensive photographs were
contemporary, limited edition prints by Hong Lei 洪磊, such as
his splendidly morbid, symbolically charged Autumn in the Forbidden City -
East Veranda 紫禁城的秋天 - 太和殿东回廊 of 1997 (click on image to the left),
fetching well over 65.000 USD each.
|
 A Yamamoto Postcard | New (May 12, 2007): I
wanted to direct the reader's attention to the Historical
Chinese Postcard Project: 1896 - 1920. The project has been
dormant for over three years, but before it becomes what information
scientists call a solitary "information island", I think it very much
deserves to be on record here. It is one of Regine Thiriez's projects,
and while the reproduced images of the photographic postcards are not
as crisp or engaging as one would like (due to their smallish size
mainly), the introductory texts written by Thiriez on the subject and
the included supplementary research data are extremely helpful. |
|
CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT
| At
the annual meeting of the Association for
Asian Studies, held this year in Boston on March 22-25, panel 107 is
dedicated to Photography in Qing China and Meiji Japan.
Chaired by Oliver Moore (Leiden University), presentations related to
China include
- The Formative Years of Shanghai
Photography, 1842-1875 (Regine Thiriez)
- Drumming up
Business in early Shanghai Photographic Studios (Oliver Moore) |
|
| New (March 1, 2007): I
now have had the chance to review Terry Bennett's book Old Japanese Photographs:
Collector's Data Guide (Quaritch, London
2006, new 13-digit ISBN 978-0-9550852-4-6, 65 Pounds Sterling).
With nine pages the review became a bit longer than I had originally
anticipated. The disparate nature of its individual parts
notwithstanding, this volume is indeed a resource and tool of the
greatest value to collectors, researchers, archivists and historians.
Read my review here
(PDF format, 150kb). |
 Friedrich Behme in the Botanical Garden of
Singapore, 1903 | New (February 6, 2007):
One of the more fascinating aspects of photography as a medium lies in
its versatility.One can make a perfect living by just shooting weddings
these days. Or portraits. Or events, such as a rock concert. A more
fundamental use of photography, and one indeed intricately tied to its
legitimacy of existence in the first place, lies in its ability to
record and to capture, to quantify and to measure. Fractions of time,
the flow of movement, the features of plants, the surfaces of the
earth, the structure of buildings, the docking of molecules. In short:
it is not far-fetched to say that photography was destined, if not
invented, to aid and accelerate the sciences (although it soon became
its own art form). In a presentation given at a conference in November
2006 I address the question
of early scientific photography in China and how this newly acquired
font of visual evidence was incorporated into the scientific discourse
in Europe. (PowerPoint converted to PDF, 7.5MB). It is a big
subject, and this is a first attempt to formulate some general ideas.
Comments and suggestions are welcome. |
| | New (January 13, 2007):
I recently rediscovered among my possessions a set of fifty
lantern slides from ca. 1920. They were published by the
Seemann Lichtbildanstalt in Leipzig, as series # CLVIII of their
lantern slide series on comprehensive "country studies" (the Latin
sub-title of the complete series is bibliotheca cosmographica),
to be used throughout the advanced educational system in Germany and
Austria in the 1920s and 30s. Lantern slides were once a very popular
didactic teaching tool, but most of these collections are of course no
longer in use and have either been discarded, or have been lost in
other ways. The East Asia set of slides discussed here includes very
interesting scenes of China, Manchuria and
Korea. Using a Canon 8600F scanner I processed all slides and
put them up on my Zenfolio site. The Canon scanner,
btw, proved to be up to the task, but nevertheless will be replaced
with a more versatile Epson 4990 scanner soon. |
| | New (January 1, 2007):
The London antiquarian bookdealer Quaritch
contacted me and sent along their latest catalog
and newsletter (PDF file) of old photographs for sale. While
most of the items are of Japanese provenance (and much of it attributed
to Felice Beato), there are a couple of items related to (early) things
Chinese, such as a 1873 volume of The
Far East with five original pasted-in
photographs. What is of much broader interest, however, is the
advertised, new publication by Terry
Bennett, called Old Japanese Photographs: [A]
Collector's Data Guide (Quaritch, London
2006, new 13-digit ISBN 978-0-9550852-4-6, 65 Pounds Sterling). Without
having had a chance to see or review this book, it is probably fair to
say that it would be highly desirable to have something similar on hand
for old Chinese photographs, especially with the market for historical
visual documentation being what it is right now in China. |
| | New (November 22, 2006):
Back again in Beijing, I visited the Gongwang fu, which features an
interesting exhibition of old
photographs. I was allowed to take some random pictures of
this exhibition, and am posting a selection here. For visual
documentation on how the actual, present-day Gongwang fu looks like,
please check out my Zenfolio gallery,
which includes images of the parts currently under restoration (and not
open to the public). While on the
subject of the Gongwang fu: A wonderful and very important compilation
of historical photographs has just been published on the princely
palaces of Qing-dynasty Beijing. Full information on this publication
can be found in the bibliography. | |
| New (September 24, 2006):
A small photo-diary of Mrs. Nora Dillenbeck, dated 1916, is now fully
scanned and on-line as a slide-show at this URL. Dillenbeck was a
missionary stationed in Shandong (Tai'an fu). The album chronicles her
"tour of duty", starting out on a steamer in San Francisco. Some of the
original photographs show some fading, but most of them are still
bright and clear.
I picked up this annotated,
well-preserved album from a dealer friend in New York a while back,
and only noticed the Ithaca-connection when I picked it up
again for processing. | |
| New (September 11, 2006):
Harvard announced recently that The Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr. Collection
on Muslims in China would become available on-line
through their visual imaging system. The following details may be of
interest about this collection:
"Over 1000 photos of Muslims and Christian missionaries working among
them in Western China in the 1920s and 1930s form the core of this
collection, which is supplemented by several hundred books, pamphlets,
broadsides, etc., in several languages. Gift of Rev. Claude L. Pickens,
Jr. in memory of Joseph Fletcher, Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian
History at Harvard University. The albums and photographs can be viewed
in the VIA online catalog. A finding aid to the printed materials can
be viewed in the OASIS online catalog." These
visual resources are accompanied by Islam in China: A
Selected Bibliography of English-Language Publications and
various other, supplementary tools. |
 Fujian exhibit - detail  | New (August 1, 2006):
During a recent, month-long trip to China, I came across a couple of
very interesting items and events, which I am happy to share on this
site:
1) A photo-exhibit
featuring the History
of Fujian Normal University in the city of Fuzhou, from
the beginnings up to the 1950s.
2) A
private
photograph album of Huang Jiliang, a
young Chinese sent abroad to America for studies in the late 1870s or
early 1880s. This item is kept behind glass in the Memorial Hall
dedicated to the French-Chinese naval battle of 1884, also in the city
of Fuzhou. Huang in fact died in this battle, aged only 24. For more on
this particular album and its background story see here
(PDF-file).
3) The
photographic legacy of the renowned architect Liang Sicheng,
who documented many archaeological sites and historic buildings
throughout central and northern China between 1936 and 1938. As far as
I was told, three sets of his images exist: two are in private hands,
and one is at Beijing's Tsinghua University Library, where a digital image archive has been
created of many of these very interesting images (which number between
1600 and 2000). Note that the Tsinghua University Library link -
although pointing in the right direction - does not always work. I was
shown the complete Liang-collection at a scholar's private home in late
June, and was allowed to take some pictures of parts of the collection.
These I put up in a gallery on my new zenfolio.com
site, as images 39 - 45. | | |
New (July 26, 2006):
I thought I'd mention my new site on China's urban
transformation and other subjects. Since this site here is
all about the history of photography in China, I thought it prudent to
construct a site which features my own (recent) photographs of things
Chinese, especially visual documentation on
-
Urban planning;
- Modern Chinese art;
- The cities
of Beijing, Tianjin and Fuzhou and their surroundings.
- Impressions of Tibet and its borderlands from the mid-80s.
If any of this is of interest please take a look at my zenfolio.com
site, which now features over 2000 images. |
| | New (June 14, 2006):
Leaving the position of curator of the Wason Collection at Cornell
University (after more than 5 years on the job) required moving
this web site to the newly founded gatheringmountains.net
domain. I hope this will not inconvenience visitors too much, as I have
left a referral site up on the Cornell server. |
| | New (May 4, 2006): A
new, long anticipated Chinese-language web site has
ben put up by its owner, Mr. Tong Bingxue. The (privately managed)
on-line Museum of Chinese Photography and Old
Photographs Network (中国摄影博物馆暨老照片网) includes exhibits,
articles, channels for material exchange, and a letterbox to leave
notes and messages. In the "about us" section the author state that
this site is devoted to Chinese photography of the late Qing and early
Republican era (until ca. 1920). I myself have seen the "off-line",
physical collection in Beijing not too long ago and can attest to its
authenticity and value. As more images come online, accompanied by
proper annotations and the corresponding research, this site will make
an important contribution to our understanding of the development of
the medium of photography and the modernization of visual arts in China
during this critical time period. |
| | New (April 2, 2006):
An upcoming auction of historical
photographs of China may be of interest. Put together by Viviane Esders
in Paris, the auction will take place April 12, 2006 (Yann le Moeul,
Salle 69, rue Drouot, 14:30). Click here to download the catalog of
items (82 pages, in PDF format). This auction includes very prized and
unique items, such as photographs by Jules Itier, John Thomson, Milton
Miller, Saunders, Thomas
Child, Auguste Francois (his personal photo-album!), Perckhammer,
Chin-San Long 郎静山, Cartier-Bresson and others. The results and proceeds
of this auction can be seen here (PDF file; all prices in US
dollar). |
| | New (Jan.23, 2005):
A small archive of images from Beijing,
mainly consisting of images from the Thorbecke/Schiff cooperation (here
pointing to the marvelous book Peking Studies, published
by Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai 1934), and the well-known
Perckhammer volume on Peking (Albertus Verl., Berlin 1928), has been
made accessible by a group under the direction of Christian Henriot
(CNRS). The - searchable - archive contains 215 well annotated images. |
| | New (Nov. 2, 2004):
I recently had opportunity to do research on a topic entitled Images
of Daoism in Early Photographic Sources. The results of this
research were presented at the Boston Conference on Daoism in June
2003. The photographs assembled and discussed in this presentation were
taken from a great variety of sources, including Chinese illustrated
newspapers like the Liangyou huabao, photographic albums (published and
unpublished ones), early international exhibitions, etc.
See
here
for the
PowerPoint presentation of this talk (converted to PDF,
opens in separate window). | |
| Also (relatively) new:
A dissertation (hitherto still unpublished) by Kerstin Gesell
may be of interest:
Title:
Imaginary China in Western Representations of the Orient,
Institution:
Surrey Institute of Art & Design, 2003 (Note: the institution's new
name is now University College for the Creative Arts).
Abstract: This dissertation examines aspects of
nineteenth century Chinese photography in the light of recent critical
writing around 'Orientalism'. My introduction introduces 'Orientalism'
. Three dimensions of 'Orientalism', 'Scenes and Types', 'Violence' and
the 'Erotic' are subsequently discussed with reference to Chinese
photography. My conclusion assesses the ways in which Chinese
photography did, and did not, correspond to prevailing nineteenth
century notions of the 'East'. |
Notes and
Explanations:
This list of titles was started in 1988, when I
first became interested in the history of China via the modern visual
media of photography. Considering the highly specialized topic, this
bibliography nevertheless does contain quite a number of works and
collections (345 entries at present), which can be
attributed to the fact that recently publishers have become rather
interested in reprinting photographic albums on China of the Republican
Period or the late Qing period. Besides, Chinese archives have opened
up, resulting in the availability of hitherto rather hidden treasures.
Note that some of these items listed below are unique,
which basically means you will only be able to find one single copy or
album, such as is the case for example with Burger's photographic
album, an item which was specifically made for and presented to the
emperor of Austria, and which is held at the National Library of
Austria in Vienna.
My bibliography supplies
rather exhaustive data on a variety of issues concerning these albums
(which may in fact be reprints or modern publications of, say,
postcards printed in Hong Hong in the early thirties). Besides the
usual bibliographical description such as Author or editor, date and
place of printing etc. I try to trace the fotographers themselves under
a biographical heading. The precise number of images is given, their
actual (or average) size, whether they are b/w or colour, with which
camera(s) they were taken, which film was used, and, above all, what
the photographs themselves show. Whereas not every single item
(reproduced or original) is described, I still try to give an overall
impression of what the fotographer did actually intend to "shoot". So
look out for keywords, whether they be of a geographical nature (like
"Hong Kong" for example), of a mere topographical nature (like
"Baiyunguan 白云观"), or personal names ("Lin Biao 林彪" - the entry will,
for example, guide you to the only two published images I know of Lin
Biao after his plane crashed so mysteriously on its way to
Moscow). Many highly interesting Chinese and some Japanese publications
are included here (with Chinese/Japanese characters). Many of them are
of a more recent date, but do reflect photographs that were taken well
before 1949. A few items (with titles like "100 Years of Photography in
Shanghai" or the like), however, also do contain some material of a
later date. Overall, the deadline to qualify for the bibliography is
still around 1949.
(Note: this "deadline" is under review
at present. A few items of great value have been published recently on
the Great Leap Forward 大跃进 and the Cultural Revolution 文化大革命, which I
am tempted to include under their own headings; in addition, extremely
interesting "new" or "avant-garde" photography is practiced in China,
Taiwan and Hong Kong these days, and it would be of geat value to give
an introduction and an overview of at least the most important works of
this genre).
For comments or suggestions (or
contributions!) please do not hesitate to get in touch with me by electronic mail.
On early photography in China see Regine Thiriez'
very informative book "Barbarian Lens - Western Photographers
of the Qianlong Emperor's European Palaces", published in
1998 by Gordon & Breach in Amsterdam. For more of Thiriez'
writing published on the Internet see Creating
a User's Guide on Early Photography in China (1999)
(PDF-format) or Library
Collections and Early Photography in China (Bulletin of the
International Association of Orientalist Librarians vol. 44, 2000).
Also, see Thiriez' article on Photography and Portraiture in
Nineteenth-Century China, in the journal East
Asian History 17/18 (1999), pages 77-102.
Worth noting is the Giles Pickford Collection at
the Australian National Library (a collection associated with Herbert
Giles, no less).
Here is an example of how early
advertisement for photographic equipment in a Shanghai based
magazine looked like. Note that these items were sold in a "pharmacy"
(yaofang) in those days. The scan is taken from The Chinese
Scientific and Industrial Magazine - (Gezhi huibian) vol.2,
no.3, Shanghai 1892. (file size: 292 kb).
The bibliography is
arranged in alphabetical order of the names of authors, editors or
corporate bodies. Anonymous works are listed first and are arranged
according to title. Just click on any character in the upper frame and
you will be taken to the first corresponding item.
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TECHNICAL NOTE: To view Chinese characters
please set your browser to
Unicode
(UTF-8). |
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