This poised portrait of woman wearing a swimsuit, sitting on a rock by the seaside, has been selected for publication in 1001 Photographs you must see before you die. The photograph was taken by Fu Bingchang (Foo Ping-sheung, 1895-1965) in the 1920s. Fu was a diplomat and Nationalist politician, as well as an accomplished portrait and landscape photographer. The woman may well have been a friend of Fu, whose portraiture, especially of women, is excellent. The image is from one of ten negatives that have survived from the shoot; the negatives had been stored in a trunk in Lincoln until digitised by the Historical Photographs of China project in 2007. We are delighted that Fu is being recognised as a photographer of note.
1001 Photographs you must see before you die was produced by Quintessence Editions and published internationally in many languages in September 2017. The general editor Paul Lowe is an award winning photographer, course director of the Masters Programme in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at University of the Arts London, and consultant to the World Press Photo foundation in Amsterdam. The book features 1001 of the world’s most important photographs, from the earliest images from the 19th century to the most recent images of the 21st century.