Symposium: Through the Lens: Photography in 19th Century China and Japan / 7 October

[Michael Pritchard]

The Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum’s collection holds nearly three hundred albumen prints from the 1860s and 1870s in China and Japan. These images were collected by Andrew Carnegie in 1878 during his trip around the world. The collection includes photographs by both local and western photographers, such as Lai Afong, Felice Beato, Milton Miller, William Saunders, Shuzaburo Usui, Uchida Kuichi and Baron von Stillfried.  This event brings together scholars of Chinese and Japanese art, photography and cultural geography with the aim of uncovering the rhetorical complexities of these prints, and exploring the fluidity of the lines between local/western, insider/outsider, art/photography and commercial/fine art images, as well as analysing the relationship between landscape photography and political power.

This symposium which takes place on 7 October at Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum, Moodie Street, Dunfermline, with presentations by: 

• Professor Nick Pearce, Richmond Chair of Fine Arts (Chinese Art and Photography), University of Glasgow
• Dr Chia-Ling Yang, Senior Lecturer of at the School of Art History (Chinese painting), University of Edinburgh
• Dr Luke Gartlan, Senior Lecturer at the School of Art History (History of Photography), University of St Andrews
• Dr Rosina Buckland, Senior Curator (Japanese Collections), National Museums Scotland
• Dr James Ryan, Associate Professor of Historical and Cultural Geography, University of Exeter

See more and book tickets here.