This page introduces an AHRC-funded exploratory project on the history of photography in China. The project aims to explore the feasibility of a history of social photography in China which promises not only to rescue from oblivion a whole range of neglected and rapidly disappearing photographic material - from the art photo to the family snapshot - but also to raise interesting comparative observations which reach out beyond Europe. While we have a number of studies on foreign photography about China, next to nothing is known to what happened when Chinese people controlled the camera to create images of Chinese subjects for Chinese audiences. As an abundance of source material of the republican period shows, photographic images permeated everyday life, from the pictorial newspaper to the family portrait on the wall. The existence of professional photographers in every town and city is never noted in the field of social history: in stark contrast to Africa, where dedicated scholars from Europe and Africa have collaborated to reconstruct not only the histories, but also the collections of representative studios, we know next to nothing about photography in China - despite the simple fact that by the 1930s virtually everybody who could save a dollar had made the visit to one of the hundreds of studios kept busy by an incessant demand for portraits.
Yet even relatively 'straightforward' studio photographs can raise interesting questions. Can we rely on remaining photos to get closer to an interpretation of the language of self-presentation? The use of backdrops, for instance, is striking in the material we have located so far: cars frequently signified modernity, as ordinary people would pose as if driving an expensive car, or even flying through the skies in a modern plane. Most people looked straight at the camera and their entire bodies were photographed, whether standing or sitting: clothes offered visual evidence of one's profession, wealth and status, while full-length photography included a larger part of the ubiquitous backdrop. Poor or rich, with few exceptions faces remained formal: the photo was a record of the person rather than the personality, and smiles were rare. The language of backdrops, the poses adopted by sitters, the techniques used to develop photos, the materials associated with portrait photos such as mounts and stands can be fruitfully analysed, but can we interpret studio photos in the absence of any knowledge about the sitters, as remaining material often comes with precious little information?
The project also hopes to raise comparative issues in the history of photography. How, for instance, was photography used in China? Some of the remaining photographs and textual evidence indicate that local inflections transformed the uses and meanings of the camera, which rapidly incorporated other more traditional media, calligraphy and painting in particular. As in India sophisticated techniques and inventive procedures led to distinct local styles of visual culture: photos were often painstakingly tinted by hand, while a number of artists even applied oil colours to efface the boundary between 'photography' and 'painting'. The use of calligraphy was unique to photographic practice in China: in a country where mastery of the written language was a sign of social distinction, the educated would often add a carefully calligraphied verse onto a carte-de-visite, while artists wrote entire poems onto sepia-toned photos of landscapes and added a red chop signature. The project aims to raise questions about the appropriation of the camera and locate textual and visual material which might help answer them.
Photography also assumed complex dimensions in public space, and the project aims to highlight how these could be approached, whether collective photographs by institutions, amateur photography and photo contests organised by local photography associations, the rise of news photography and the appearance of specialised knowledge in the form of magazines, technical books, photo supplements or photography books. How was the camera recruited to serve the government, not only in propaganda, but also in meticulously documenting the construction of the state, from photos of municipal projects (new roads were photographed complete with steamroller), industrial enterprises (chimneys were rhapsodised) to government institutions (prisons were documented to offer visual proof of government achievements; click here to see prison photos). The modes of circulation of the photographic image are of crucial interest, whether handed out by political leaders, printed on postcards by famous actresses, reproduced in books by the lithographic presses, or displayed in exhibitions and sold as collectible art. Finally, most of the project aims to probe the various social dimensions of photography before the advent of communism in 1949, but how feasible would it be to cross that line? With technical advances and cheaper production, increasing numbers of ordinary people could have their portrait taken, even if the political language of permissible backdrops, bodily postures, and photographic situations had changed substantially - as remaining family albums show. Below is a (random) selection of vernacular photos dating from the republican era.
The History of Photography in China
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Studio Photography