Author Archives: Robert Bickers

'Picturing China' on display in Beijing

On Thursday 21st March, the British ambassador to China, Sebastian Wood CMG, opened an exhibition of a selection of the project’s photographs, organised by the British Embassy and funded by Research Councils UK. There have been stories in China News … Continue reading

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Revisiting Darwent's Shanghai

Our pop-up exhibition, ‘Darwent Revisited: Shanghai now and then’, is unveiled on Saturday 9th February, at the Bristol City Museum, and then on Sunday 10th February at the city’s new M-Shed museum.  Funded by the AHRC and the British Academy, It … Continue reading

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Darwent's Shanghai

We have been quiet recently, but busy, preparing a modest exhibition which responds to a favourite in our collections, the photographs of the Reverend Charles Ewart Darwent, minister of the Union Church Shanghai (新天安堂) from 1899-1919. As well as publishing … Continue reading

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L is for … Leaders

China has just changed its leadership team, at the 18th Party Congress in Beijing. The photograph below, a favourite of ours, shows three Premiers in waiting, and the widow of one just deceased. Here we have Wang Jingwei (second left); … Continue reading

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Sailing on

We have been on our holidays, but were also overwhelmed by correspondence resulting from July’s BBC Radio 4 documentary about the project, ‘Old Photographs Fever‘, and the accompanying BBC News slideshow. Many wonderful new collections were offered to us, and … Continue reading

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Listen again

‘Old Photographs Fever: The search for China’s pictured past’, which explores our project through interviews with the team, with some of our contributors, and with some of those who make use of the project, was broadcast earlier today on BBC … Continue reading

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Favourites: Robert Hart’s band

This is a personal favourite of mine, although there is plenty of competition. I love Warren Swire’s photograph of the old ‘Bridge of Ten Thousand Ages’ (万寿桥) in Fuzhou, his wonderful picture of the Bund and shipping at Jiujiang, and … Continue reading

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Taikoo ships and buildings

For readers interested in the photographs of shipping that can be found in the collections, notably those of G. Warren Swire, or the architectural history of the treaty ports, there are two new sites to investigate. John Swire & Sons … Continue reading

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N is for Ningbo

The team has recently been corresponding with an informal group in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo, who are researching the architectural heritage of this former treaty port. Opened under the first of the Sino-British treaties (Nanjing, 1842), Ningbo was … Continue reading

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Amahs

Omnipresent in many of the portraits of foreign families, especially children, is the amah. Often unnamed, or simply captioned ‘Amah’ , these were the Chinese nannies and wet-nurses, servants who suckled or looked after children. They were indispensable additions to … Continue reading

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