Category Archives: Photographers

Reversing Robert Capa’s gaze: Wuhan, 1938

Posted on January 11, 2019 by Robert Bickers

Ooo, look: our eagle-eyed Project Manager Jamie Carstairs spotted this wonderful photograph taken in 1938 by Robert Capa in Hankou (Wuhan) and recently published in MAGNUM China (Colin Pantall and Zheng Ziyu, eds, Thames & Hudson, 2018): This is one of … Continue reading →

Posted in History of photography in China, Photographers | Tagged Hankow, Robert Capa, Sino-Japanese War, students, Wuhan | Comments Off

‘A Darkly Mysterious Instrument’: Through China with John Thomson

Posted on July 6, 2018 by Andrew Hillier

Dr Andrew Hillier discusses the China photographs of John Thomson (1837-1921) in the light of a recent exhibition of his work at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS. One of two hundred images published in John Thomson’s Illustrations of China and its … Continue reading →

Posted in Exhibition, Guest blogs, History of photography in China, Photographers | Tagged exhibition, SOAS, Thomson | Comments Off

Restoring John Thomson’s grave

Posted on May 31, 2018 by Jamie Carstairs

Jamie Carstairs, Historical Photographs of China Project manager, has joined the committee seeking to restore photographer John Thomson’s grave. Here he explains why. An ad hoc group has come together to try to raise the funds needed to restore the … Continue reading →

Posted in Collections, Exhibition, Heritage, Photographers | Tagged china, exhibition, fund, grave, photographer, Siam, Thomson | Comments Off

‘With a Camera in Yunnan’: the Ethnographic Expeditions of Fred W. Carey, RGS #2

Posted on April 27, 2018 by Andrew Hillier

PART 2 – COLLECTING AND DISPLAY In this second blog, Dr Andrew Hillier explores how the International Exhibition in Paris (1900) provided this young Customs man with the opportunity to collect local costumes in Yunnan but how their acquisition and … Continue reading →

Posted in Collections, Guest blogs, Photographers | Tagged Carey, Chinese Maritime Customs Service, customs, ethnography, Royal Geographical Society, Semao, Shan, Szemao, Yunnan | Comments Off

‘With a Camera in Yunnan’: the Ethnographic Expeditions of Frederic W. Carey, RGS #1

Posted on March 29, 2018 by Andrew Hillier

Drawing on a collection of photographs taken in Yunnan at the turn of the twentieth century, in this, the first of two blogs, Dr Andrew Hillier discusses what these images tell us about ‘the imperial gaze’ and the mind-set of … Continue reading →

Posted in Collections, Guest blogs, Photographers | Tagged Carey, Chinese Maritime Customs Service, customs, ethnography, Royal Geographical Society, Semao, Shan, Szemao, Yunnan | Comments Off

An image by Fu Bingchang is one of 1001 ‘must see’ photographs

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Jamie Carstairs

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Photographers, Photographs in Books | Tagged Fu Bingchang, portrait, publication | Comments Off

New content: Hedda Morrison, Joseph Needham, Edward Bangs Drew and Claude L. Pickens Jr.

Posted on May 24, 2017 by Robert Bickers

We are pleased to be able to announce today that we have successfully migrated the content from the Visualising China platform into our Historical Photographs of China site. In practical terms this means an almost 50 per cent increase in … Continue reading →

Posted in About us, cross-searching, New Collections, Photographers | Comments Off

Introducing the Malcolm Rosholt Collection

Posted on January 11, 2017 by Robert Bickers

Today we are able to unveil a significant new addition to our collections that is now available for viewing: the photographs of Malcolm Rosholt. Born in Wisconsin in 1907, Malcolm Rosholt arrived in China in 1931 with the intention of … Continue reading →

Posted in Collections, Photographers | Tagged camp, children, China Press, Huangpu, journalism, Pudong, river, Shanghai, war | Comments Off

Liu Yuanyuan on Fu Bingchang and Beibei Northern Springs

Posted on August 12, 2016 by Guest

In the second of our blogs from participants in the ‘Snapshots in Time’ summer school we hear from Liu Yuanyuan, a second-year PhD student in Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh (Email: s1366067@sms.ed.ac.uk). Her research interests lie in the fields of landscape history … Continue reading →

Posted in Collections, Guest blogs, History of photography in China, Photographers | Tagged Fu Bingchang, Sichuan | Comments Off

Our China spies

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Robert Bickers

We have been attempting to persuade a friend of the project, author Adam Brookes, former BBC Beijing correspondent, to pen a note to mark the paperback publication of his second novel, Spy Games. If you have not read it, you … Continue reading →

Posted in Photograph of the day, Photographers | Tagged Canton, espionage, Fu Bingchang, George Findlay Andrew, Guomindang, Hu Jibang, Mikhail Borodin, Morris 'Two-gun' Cohen, Moscow, spies, spy, Swatow | Comments Off