Quick Answer: How Did Photography Develop in China?
Photography appeared in China in the nineteenth century. Chinese and foreign photographers made portraits, views and albums for different clients. By the twentieth century, photographs also circulated in newspapers and wartime publications, while some artists combined negatives to make imagined scenes. [1][2][3][4][5]
- Studios: Commercial photographers posed sitters and sold prints, views and albums. [1][2]
- Press: Captions, selection and reproduction helped a photograph reach people far from where it was taken. [3][5][6]
- Art: Composite prints and photographs of performances made the camera part of practices that extended beyond taking a single exposure. [4][7]
A photographer’s name, the date of an exposure and the date or medium of a later print can belong to different stages of the same image’s history. [1][2][3]
A late Qing group portrait can look spontaneous until you notice how everyone is placed. A mountain scene may appear to record one view until you learn that its maker joined several negatives. Looking at both the picture and the way it was made helps place photography within Chinese art.
Late Qing Studios and Photographic Albums
Photography spread in the context of nineteenth-century trade and expanding foreign power. Early accounts often foreground itinerant photographers from abroad, but Chinese operators such as Lai Afong (赖阿芳, Lài Āfāng) and Liang Shitai (梁时泰, Liáng Shítài) built commercial practices of their own. Studio catalogues and signatures can tell us who sold an image even when the person who operated the camera remains uncertain. [1]
Around 1869, foreign residents of Fuzhou commissioned Lai to photograph an excursion to Fangguangyan Monastery. He arranged the group against the rock face, with some sitters standing or seated and one stretched out in front. The object is an albumen silver print from a glass negative. The glass negative held the image that could be printed on paper; the different poses give this particular print the appearance of an unplanned pause. [2]
Photographs also reached readers in bound volumes. John Thomson’s Illustrations of China and Its People paired images with descriptions in the 1870s. A group portrait made for the people in it and a book assembled for readers abroad could show overlapping subjects while asking their viewers to notice different things. [2][3]
Photography Between the Darkroom and the Press
Lang Jingshan (郎静山, Láng Jìngshān) worked as a photojournalist and also experimented in the darkroom. His 1934 Majestic Solitude combines parts of different photographic negatives into an imagined landscape. The relationship between the tree and the mountain matters as much as the individual photographed subjects. For a comparison, see how space is composed in Chinese literati painting. [4]
In the late 1930s, print reproduction gave photographs a public role in wartime reporting. In 1938, wartime photographer Sha Fei (沙飞, Shā Fēi) argued for their power to mobilize readers against Japanese invasion. The published photograph could work alongside captions and other images. The distribution problem had parallels in modern Chinese woodcuts, although camera work and carving produced different kinds of images. [5]
After 1949: Published Images and Everyday Observation
After 1949, official publications made photography part of public reporting and political communication. A published image could present an event through choices about timing, framing, selection and captioning. Those choices matter even when a photograph records an identifiable place or person. [5]
The independent exhibition Nature, Society, Man opened in Beijing in April 1979. Within the group associated with it, some photographers argued for the distinct artistic language of photography, while others emphasized the need to document ordinary experience. The exhibition gave these approaches a venue beyond the pages of a newspaper. [6][9]
In a photograph made in Dalian in 1981, Liu Heung Shing (刘香成, Liú Xiāngchéng) framed a student skating past a large statue of Mao. The skater occupies the open space near the base of the monument. That juxtaposition brings an ordinary activity into a picture that could otherwise have been a straightforward record of the statue. [6]
Photography as Contemporary Art
For Breathing (1996), Song Dong (宋冬, Sòng Dōng) breathed on the cold pavement of Tiananmen Square and then on the frozen surface of Houhai. In the square, his breath left a visible patch of ice. The frozen lake showed no equivalent mark. Yin Xiuzhen (尹秀珍, Yǐn Xiùzhēn) took the photographs that preserve the two actions. A credit line can distinguish who conceived and performed an action from who framed the image. The relationship is one way to read photography within Chinese contemporary art. [7]
Four Photographs and Projects to Compare
| Image or project | Date and setting | 辨識重點 |
|---|---|---|
| Group Portrait near Fangguangyan Monastery, Fujian | About 1869, commissioned excursion | Notice how the posing uses both the foreground and the rock wall. [2] |
| Majestic Solitude | 1934, composite landscape | Consider how distinct natural forms appear to occupy one space. [4] |
| Student skating past a statue of Mao | 1981, Dalian | See how the moving figure and the fixed mass of the monument share the frame. [6] |
| Breathing, Tiananmen Square | 1996, performance and photograph | Look for the small patch of frozen breath beneath the performer. [7] |
FAQs About Photography in China
When Did Photography Reach China?
Surviving photographs date to at least the 1840s. One example is Jules Itier’s 1844 view of Praia Grande Bay in Macao, a daguerreotype formed on a silver-coated copper plate. Studios and traveling photographers were producing portraits and views in the following decades. [1][8]
What Is a Composite Photograph?
A composite brings several photographic elements together in one image. In Majestic Solitude, Lang Jingshan used different negatives to build a single landscape in the darkroom. [4]
Who Made a Photograph Signed by a Studio?
A studio signature can identify the business responsible for making or selling a print. It may leave the camera operator unidentified, so check whether a collection entry credits an individual, a studio or an attribution. [1]
資料來源
[1] Getty Research Institute. History of Photography in China, 1839–ca. 1911
[2] The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lai Afong: Group Portrait near Fangguangyan Monastery, Fujian
[3] The Metropolitan Museum of Art. John Thomson: Illustrations of China and Its People
[4] M+. Lang Jingshan: Majestic Solitude
[5] Yang Xiaoyan. The Propaganda of Photography
[6] Claire Roberts. Seeing China: Liu Heung Shing and Situational Understanding
[7] M+. Song Dong: Breathing, Tiananmen Square
[8] Hong Kong Museum of History. Photographic Processes
[9] University of Vienna. April Photography Association