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Picturing China
1870-19509
Oliver Moore
C
reated by Chinese and British pho-tographers, many photographsthat the Historical Photographs of China project safeguards exemplify anextraordinarily confident handling of the camera as an implement of histori-cal record. Both professional and ama-teur images, usually motivated to someextent by the ideological concerns of institutions that employed the individu-als who made them, these photographsinclude views of commercial endeav-our, industrial progress, philanthropicenterprise, political ceremonies, diplo-matic junctures, tourist views, streetassemblies and battles, not to mentionsome symbolic bonfires (of opium; of Japanese goods). Most images date tothe period between 1900 and 1940. 
A drawing room and anempress-dowager.
Even the more personal mementoesof living quarters, church attendance,childhood (Chinese and British) can behighly revealing. One of my favouritesamong a domestic category of souve-nirs is a view of the drawing room inthe Senior Customs Assistant’s resi-dence at Macao, ca. 1906
(fig. 17)
, forit captures what pictures the incum-bent of his office hung on the walls.Most remarkable is the presence of theempress-dowager Cixi in three or per-haps five of the famous photographsdating to the period 1903-05, when theQing ruler commissioned numerousportraits of herself 
(fig. 18)
. In 1904,no doubt aware of the role of the pho-tograph in international dealings, Cixihad sent one of her portraits for presen-tation to the German empress AugustaViktoria. Even more remarkably thatyear, the palace tacitly approved whenthe Japanese publishing entrepreneurTakano Bunjiro in Shanghai prepareda number of the dowager portraits forcommercial distribution. The publish-er’s recommendation to potential buy-ers of these images encouraged them“to gaze on the venerable face, in thesame way as westerners who hang animage of their ruler in their homes”.This is a small discovery, but it is a fas-cinating visual rejoinder to the storyof the empress-dowager’s earliestattempts to put her image into publiccirculation. Hanging in this particu-lar drawing room, the presence of theempress also highlights the uniquepolitical relations between the BritishCustoms service and the de facto rulerof the Qing empire. Regardless of howthe Macao Assistant, Reginald Hedge-land, acquired these portraits, his own-ership is proof that Cixi’s efforts to haveherself photographed in a number of costumes and surrounded by a chang-ing repertoire of elegant objects was notimpelled by palace boredom and vanity.Instead, it was consonant with a Qinggovernment strategy that subjected thephotographic image to its full potentialin hitherto untested functions of for-eign and internal diplomacy.
Histories of differentpractices of photography
The Project’s photographs also docu-ment the history of a visual mediumthat underwent repeated changes overthe centuries following the first formalannouncement of a photographic proc-ess in Paris in 1839. No less significant-ly, the photographic work of a Britishcustoms commissioner, for instance,juxtaposed with that of a Chinese politi-cian in the Republican era raises inter-esting questions of how photographicvision was variously determined bynative and foreign practices. What kind of photography does a col-lection of photographs spanning sev-eral decades represent? One answerto the question is defined by the year1888. From then onwards, followingthe Eastman Company’s productionof the Kodak camera, people’s experi-ence of photography in many parts of the world was increasingly limited to- and liberated by - nothing more thanaiming the lens. “You press the button- we do the rest” was the unforgettablesales pitch. In 1900, Kodak began pro-duction of the long-running ‘Brownie’,aiming its simplicity and cheapnesspartly towards children.
(fig. 16)
Thesnapped photograph, which engen-dered the new Chinese verb
cuo
, nowcame into its own. One of the criticaldevelopments was the dramatic short-ening of exposure times, which allowedthe photographer to ‘freeze’ and cap-ture objects in movement. Felice Bea-to’s frequently reproduced photographof a north corner of the Peking citywalls (1860), for instance, is an eerilyunpopulated architectural view, since,during its long exposure time, the pas-sers-by slid away from any permanentoptical grasp. Such an image belongsto the history of quite another kind of photography.
Historicalviewsandhistoriesofviewing
(fig. 16)(fig. 17)(fig. 13)(fig. 13)
 
10
Picturing China
1870-1950
Striving for the snapshot
Not all photography became suddenlyas easy as the marketing of the snap-shot would suggest, but a new partner-ship between the individual and thephotographic industry reformulatedideas about how and when to do pho-tography. One of the effects of this rev-olution was that it created new expec-tations of how photographed humanbodies might look less formally posed.Portable and speedily operated appara-tus freed millions from the establish-ment, conventions and opening hoursof the photographic studio. Studies of photography in China have tended tostress exclusively the studio portraitas if it were a supreme artistic genreor else the only possible photographictransaction in the visual economy of late Qing and Republican China. Of course, studio portraits deserve atten-tion, but some of their shifts in contentand form merit analysis in context withphotographic pursuits that happenedoutside the norms and practices of stu-dio business. Indeed, from the 1890sonwards, the notion of photographictruth increasingly stressed informalityas one of the most important qualities of amateur and professional photographs.Even photographers using sophisticat-ed equipment - as well as some work-ing for studios - strived for a ‘snapshot’look. This does not mean, however, thatthe old style of rigorously posed por-traits and groups disappeared, for mil-lions of consumers clung tenaciouslyto social and political ideals visualisedby horizontal evenness, vertical sym-metry, and hierarchical order. Instead,with the advent of the 20th century, twoquite diverse practices of photographyabsorbed the attention of varied andsometimes inter-related priorities. One hugely arresting photograph thatis a self-reflexive address to these issuesis the portrait of Min Chin
(fig. 19)
byFu Bingchang (Foo Pingsheung). Fuwas a Republican politician and dip-lomat, as well as a seriously engagedamateur photographer who practicedall the necessary skills to develop andprint his photographs. Min crouchesslightly as she manipulates the controlsand the shutter release of a Voigtländer‘Superb’ camera. No ‘Brownie’ this, butarguably the best camera on the market(after 1933) for professional and ama-teur work. Fu’s image is a portrait of Min
and
a leading product of the preci-sion optics industry. It looks snapped,but, of course, it is carefully arranged(and photographed with Fu’s secondcamera). It is also a photograph of tak-ing a certain kind of photograph. Thewoman smiles and aims the cameradownwards. Is this to suggest photo-graphing a child? Leaving aside whatanyone’s fantasies might have been atthat moment, forget not that the mar-keting of the snapshot had targetedchildren for several decades by now.Hundreds of pages of Kodak literature,for example, published in Chinese anddistributed from Shanghai throughoutthe 1930s give ample space to childrenand how to photograph them.
Differing photographicvisions
Chinese bodies appear in photographsof quite a different order made by theShanghai Municipal Police officer Wil-liam Armstrong, who worked in thecity and made periodic forays into thesurrounding region. He departed fromChina in 1927. Why Armstrong shouldhave been motivated to photographlocal country people is unknown, sinceit seems not to have been any part of hiswork. Striking, however, is the fact thathe systematised these images in a waythat is exactly analogous with the visualarchives of social control used in Chinabefore and during Armstrong’s servicein Shanghai
(fig. 20)
. As if to make thecorrespondence even closer, he evencut away the backgrounds of some of his figures in order to paste the remain-ing cut-outs against a blank surface.When Armstrong arrived in Shanghaiin 1893, an administrative culture of vis-ual control was a long-established polit-ical fact. In 1865 the foreign-controlledShanghai Municipal Council stipulatedthat Chinese servants employed in theShanghai international settlementmust be registered and photographed.Many regions of the world confrontedby western imperialism in the 1860switnessed the advent of ethnographicvisual systematising, which eventuallyinspired the creation of other archivesof control. Nevertheless, the proposalto register lower-class employment inShanghai was far ahead of similar artic-ulations to enhance urban police workat the end of the 19th century. Chinesecircumstances seem to have been par-ticularly receptive to such methods. InBeijing the surviving palace archive of eunuch staff includes photographs of the newest recruits, similarly arrangedfour to a page
(fig. 21)
. Thus, Arm-strong’s images, and also recall, matcha colonial practice of seeing and archiv-ing, fully consonant with western andJapanese imperialist penetration into
(fig. 18)(fig. 19)(fig. 20)
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