One of our star photographers is Chinese diplomat Fu Bingchang (1895-1965), who pursued with fairly equal vigour all his life his activities as a diplomat, photographer, diarist, and lover. Excepting the diaries these facets of his life are fairly well represented in the 550 photographs that we have on the site. It was delightful, then, for the project to be able to help Fu’s granddaughter Dr Yee Wah Foo, and the BBC Radio 4 ‘Document’ team with their programme on Ambassador Fu’s diaries. You can listen to it here on the BBC Radio 4 site. It is an atmospheric introduction to the man and his activities — including his photography (and his clever diplomatic use of Mongolian Hot Pot) — and is deftly narrated by Yee Wah, with contributions from Johnny Foo (his son), Harvard’s Arne Westad and myself. There’s a slideshow of images online here,
And just for good measure, here is one of my Fu Bingchang favourites, his self-portrait with Sun Yat-sen’s son, Sun Fo: two elegant revolutionaries.
Fu Bingchang and Sun Fo (Sun Ke), 1920s, Fu Bingchang collection Fu-n128 © 2007 C. H. Foo and Y. W. Foo