|
China [The following article, by Terry Bennett, appeared in the book: John Hannavy, Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2008]
The earliest recorded reference to photography in China is contained in the Journal of Harry Parkes, quoted in Lane-Poole and Dickins’s The Life of Sir Harry Parkes (1894, Vol. 1, p. 31). In his entry for July 16th, 1842, the fourteen-year-old Parkes writes: “Major Malcolm and Dr. Woosnam took a sketch of the place to-day on their daguerreotype. I cannot understand it at all: but on exposing a highly polished steel plate to the sun by the aid of some glass or other it takes the scene before you on to the plate and by some solution it will stay on the plate for years. It is no use me trying to describe it, it is quite a mystery.” The photograph taken was of an unnamed town on the banks of the Yang-tse Kiang River, up which the British Expeditionary Force was making its way in order to obtain a treaty at Nanking. [Parkes and the amateur daguerreotypists were on board HMS Queen, and Major Malcolm was private secretary to Sir Henry Pottinger (HBM Plenipotentiary and Hong Kong’s first governor) and was subsequently tasked with taking the signed Treaty to England]. Even if the daguerreotypes were successful, no trace of them appears in the British foreign office archives. By way of background, Britain had just defeated China in the First Opium War (1839–42), and the Treaty of Nanking forced the opening of the five ports of Amoy, Canton, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai for both trade and residence. Hong Kong island was also ceded to Britain, although it is worth remembering that Portugal had been in de facto control of Macau since the mid-sixteenth century. The next earliest reference to photography appears in Journal d’un voyage en Chine (1848) where the author, Jules Itier (1802 -77), described taking some thirty-seven daguerreotypes in Macau and Canton in 1844. These are now held by the Musee Francais de la Photographie and one example is illustrated in John Wood’s The Scenic Daguerreotype (1995). The first mention of a photo-studio in China that the writer has been able to find, is that of a Mr West, whose Hong Kong establishment was advertised in the China Mail on March 6th, 1845:
Another early studio is that of Hugh MacKay’s, a Scotsman who took over an existing, but so far unidentified, daguerreotype and lithographic Hong Kong business in 1846. His advertisements start to appear in the China Mail from October of that year. The earliest dated photograph taken by a Chinese is a daguerreotype portrait of General Ko-Lin which was auctioned in Christie’s London on 19 October, 1994. The studio’s printed label on this 1853 image carries the name of a Shanghai photographer, Lai Chong. The ships of Commodore Perry’s 1852-54 Expedition to Japan spent some time in Macau in 1853. Eliphalet Brown Jr., the official photographer, was known to have taken photographs there but, to date, none has appeared. Another early view in the writer’s collection is an 1857 photograph of the town of Canton, just prior to the allied bombardment in December of that year. In Shanghai, the Frenchman Louis Legrand advertised his watch and clock-making business which also contained a photo-studio. The North China Herald issue of 15 August, 1857 carried the following:
By September, 1858 Legrand was advertising stereo portraits. He is also the photographer behind a commercial series of Shanghai-scenery stereo views issued in 1859 under the imprint of Legrand Freres & Cie. However, these are not the first commercial photographs of China to be published. That honour goes to the Swiss photographer, Pierre Rossier (1829 – 18??), who had been commissioned by Negretti and Zambra, a successful London-based firm specializing in the manufacture and sale of photographic and scientific equipment, to travel to the Far East and send back views for publication in Europe and America. Without naming either photographer, the periodical La Lumiere, in its 17 March 1860 issue, reviews the work of both artists. Rossier started putting together his Chinese stereo portfolio sometime in 1858; this consisted of approximately eighty-five views and portraits. Apart from two Hong Kong views, all the scenes were taken in Canton. The American, Orrin Freeman (1830-66), arrived in Shanghai from Boston with his ambrotype camera and equipment in March 1859. His first decision was to open a studio inland at Soochow, rather than Shanghai. However, after a few months he was back in Shanghai issuing the following advertisement in the North China Herald:
But by December that year, Freeman had closed his studio and moved on to Japan. Commercial photography in China in the 1840s and 1850s does not seem to have been a very profitable enterprise. William Nassau Jocelyn (1832–92) was an amateur photographer who was attached to Lord Elgin’s suite during the latter’s 1857–59 diplomatic missions to China and Japan. Jocelyn arrived in Shanghai in July 1858, taking up the post of assistant secretary and official photographer. He was replacing one Robert Morrison, who had been temporarily attached to Elgin’s staff in China from April 1857. Very little is known of Morrison, incidentally, and his work may not have survived. A few of Jocelyn’s Chinese photographs, however, can be found at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Very little pre-1860 photography of China survives today. Apart from a handful of missionaries and foreign consuls, residents at the recently opened treaty ports and in Hong Kong and Macau were focused on making money, not on wielding cameras or patronizing studios. There were really no foreign tourists, and access to the interior of China was prohibited to all except a small band of foreign diplomats and those on official business. No doubt there was some demand for portrait photography, but those few foreign studios which did operate had to work very hard to make a living. And photography in China was never easy: The hot and humid summers played havoc with chemicals, and supplies of fresh water were not always easy to secure. Travelling inland over unmade roads meant risking damage to glass plates and equipment. Many Chinese were hostile to foreigners and there was a general superstition about photography’s ability to conjure up evil spirits. Photographers and/or their equipment were, as a result, sometimes attacked. Nevertheless, by the 1860s the population in the various China coast settlements was increasing steadily and the demand for photography was consequently rising - albeit slowly. Felix Beato (1834/5–ca.1907) arrived in Hong Kong in early 1860, intending to photograph the climax to the Second Opium War (1858-60). He was a seasoned and competent professional, used to overcoming the practical and technical difficulties of photography in intemperate climates. At Hong Kong he photographed the military build-up of the Anglo-French forces and produced some memorable panoramas. He moved on to Canton and photographed the city whilst waiting for the expedition to move north. In June and July more than 200 allied warships sailed north, and in August Beato photographed the aftermath of the storming of the Taku forts, south of Peking. Beato also photographed Peking itself, after the city was occupied, and he also captured views of the Summer Palace, just before it was destroyed and looted by the allied forces. These appear to be the earliest photographic images of Peking so far discovered, and are of the utmost historical and cultural importance. In Hong Kong, a succession of photographers opened and closed studios, often buying and selling their predecessors’ stock and negatives. As a result, attribution of Hong Kong studio photographs from the 1860s and 1870s is often problematical. In 1860, Messrs. Weed and Howard set up a studio together, having travelled from California to do so. Charles Leander Weed (1824–1903) is remembered more for his California landscape photography and use of his mammoth-plate camera in various parts of the world. Weed and Howard (about whom little is known) were accompanied by Milton Miller, who initially went along as assistant. Weed and Howard didn’t stay long in Hong Kong and moved to Shanghai and then to Canton, opening studios in both places. Miller had taken over the Hong Kong studio by January 1861, and he subsequently acquired Canton in September at which time Weed returned to America. Miller managed the Hong Kong studio until 1864, after which he also probably returned home. Miller is becoming increasingly recognised as one of the key figures in early Chinese photography, even though almost nothing is known about him or his career. Although little of his landscape work has yet been identified, the genre portraits he took are celebrated for their often jarring intensity and also for the apparent empathy he felt for his Chinese sitters – be they coolie, mandarin, aristocratic lady or concubine. Miller also produced an interesting series of stereoviews of China and Japan, published by the American firm E. & H. Anthony. John Thomson (1837-1921) is also fêted as one of the finest photographers of nineteenth-century China. He left his native Scotland in 1862, and travelled to Singapore where he began his photographic career. After moving his studio to Hong Kong in 1868, he used that as a base and embarked on a number of photographic tours in China. He photographed, amongst other places, Swatow, Amoy, and Foochow and sailed up the River Min to the city of Yenping. In 1870-72 he visited Peking and travelled up the mighty Yangtze Kiang River from Shanghai, stopping at Nanking and then on further upstream beyond Wuchang. His work was immortalized in a number of his books, principal amongst which were Foochow and the River Min (1873) and Illustrations of China and its People (1873-74). Thomson, like Miller before him, had respect and understanding for most of the Chinese he encountered, and this is reflected in his portfolio of sympathetic and sensitive portraits. Thomson was an exceptionally gifted photographer – equally adept at portraiture and landscape. He was the first to introduce the beauty of China’s inland scenery to the West– a wonderful example being his work in and around Foochow. Thomson left China in 1872 and returned home. At about this time the Chinese photographer, Lai Afong, was establishing his reputation. Thomson himself was impressed: “There is one China-man in Hong Kong, of the name Afong, who has exquisite taste, and produces work that would enable him to make a living even in London.” Afong assiduously and successfully cultivated contacts amongst the foreigners in Hong Kong. As a result, many of his photographs were brought back to the West; they survive today and stand testimony to an extraordinary talent in both landscape and portraiture. He was active from ca.1859-ca.1900, and proprietor of the longest-lived studio in the Colony. Unfortunately, very little is known about his life, and his work has hardly been assessed. A contemporary of Afong’s was Tung Hing, about whom even less is known. Like Afong and Thomson, he produced some stunning landscape work around Foochow and the River Min. Again, his work has yet to be properly documented and appraised. Another major Chinese photographer based in Hong Kong was Cheung Mee (1890s – 1920s). His work was of a very high standard, and he was also successful in attracting foreign patronage. His work was of a very high standard. Numerous other Chinese operated studios predominantly in the Queen’s Road area; most of these, however, seem to have restricted their photographic activities to portraiture. In Shanghai the Englishman, William Saunders (18??-92), ran a very successful studio. Opened in 1861 or 1862, it operated until at least 1887 producing quality souvenir albums of genre portraits and views – often finely handcolored. His only serious competition came from an L.F. Fisler, about whom little is known. In the 1880s, a Chinese photographer by the name of Tai Kung established a reputation by taking multi-plate panoramas of the Shanghai Bund. We should also mention two expert photographers who spent very little time in China but who nevertheless made important contributions to Chinese photo history. The talented French amateur photographer and chemist, Paul Champion (1838-??), visited China in 1865-66 in order to collect zoological specimens. In the process, he put together a fine portfolio of scenes in Shanghai and Peking and these were published in large format and as a stereo series immediately on his return to Paris. Wilhelm Burger (1844–1920) was the official photographer to the Austria-Hungary Far East trade and diplomatic mission which arrived in China in 1869. The Austrian took a series of superb views and portraits, mainly in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Many of these are illustrated in Gert Rosenberg’s Wilhelm Burger (1984). One noted commercial photographer was St. John Edwards who operated out of Amoy from 1872 until at least the end of the 1880s. All that is known about him is that he produced a series of local views and also photographed the Chinese and aborigines of Formosa. The Englishman, Thomas Child (1841-1898), was a gas engineer attached to the Chinese Maritime Customs in Peking. In his spare time he compiled a series of some 200 views of the capital, together with genre studies of local Chinese. His albums were very popular and a number have found their way into institutional holdings. In closing, it is worth making the point that, in reality, relatively little is yet known about the history of Chinese photography, and the work of the key Western and Chinese photographers has yet to be properly researched and chronicled. In twenty years from now, however, we will surely still be celebrating the work of Louis Legrand, Pierre Rossier, Felix Beato, Milton Miller, John Thomson, William Saunders, Lai Afong, Tung Hing and Cheung Mee. It will be interesting to see who else is added to this list. Selected Bibliography Beers, Burton F, China in Old Photographs, 1860-1910, New York: Charles Scribener’s & Sons, 1978. Chen Sen, Hu Zhichuan, and Ma Yunceng et al., (eds.), Zhongguo sheying shi 1840-1937 (History of Photography in China). Beijing: Zhongguo shying chubanshe, 1987. Goodrich, L. and Cameron, Nigel, The Face of China as Seen by Photographers and Travelers, 1860-1912, Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture, 1978. Harris, David, Of Battle and Beauty: Felice Beato’s Photographs of China, Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1999. Itier, Andre, Journal d’un voyage en Chine, 1843, 1844, 1845, 1846, Paris: Dauvin & Fontaine, 1848 Lane-Poole, S. and Dickins, F. V., The Life of Sir Harry Parkes, London: Macmillan & Co., 1894. Ovenden, Richard, John Thomson (1837-1921) Photographer, Edinburgh: The Stationary Office Ltd., 1997. Rosenberg, Gert, Wilhelm Burger: Ein Welt-und Forschungsreisender mit der Kamera, 1844–1920, Wien and Munchen: Christian Brandstatter, 1984. Thiriez, Regine, Barbarian Lens, The Netherlands: Gordon & Breach Publishers, 1998. Thomson, John, Foochow and the River Min, London: Autotype Fine Art Company, 1873. Thomson, John, Illustrations of China and its people, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low & Searle, 1873-74. Wood, John, The Scenic Daguerreotype, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1995. Worswick, Clark, Imperial China: Photographs 1850–1912, New York: Pennwick Publishing, 1978. Wu Qun, Zhongguo shying licheng (The Historical Development of Photography in China), Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe, 1986. Wue, Roberta; Waley-Cohen, Joanna; Lai, Edwin K, Picturing Hong Kong Photography 1855 – 1910, New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1997.
|