A friend of the project visiting Beijing provides further images of the display at the J.W. Marriott, organised by the British Embassy.The exhibition, ‘Picturing China 1870-1950: Photographs from British collections’, or ‘1870-1950:英国收藏的中国影像’ runs until 7th April.
It is the Qingming festival today, and a public holiday in China: so if you are in Beijing, do pop along. Next stop for the exhibition: Chongqing.
The project has also recently received several further sets of albums, highlighting, amongst other places, Tianjin and Shanhaiguan, Changsha, Shaoyang (Hunan), as well as Shanghai and Hong Kong. As ever, even the smallest collections provides some gems. My own favourite comes from an album created by a Scottish member of the Shanghai Municipal Police, who served between 1929-35. Over three pages of the album meticulously document the Chinese staff who served at his first station, passport-sized photos of each individual annotated with his name and rank or police number. I have not previously seen anything like it. To the right is a very rough shot of one of the album pages.