This project is a collaboration between scholars at the University of Bristol, University of Lincoln, the Institut d'Asie Orientale and TGE-Adonis this project aims to locate, archive, and disseminate photographs from the substantial holdings of images of modern China held mostly in private hands overseas. These are often of even greater historic interest than might ordinarily be the case, as the destruction of materials inside China in war and revolution in the twentieth century, and especially during the 1966-69 Cultural Revolution, means that there is a relative dearth today of accessible photographic records in China itself.
Turmoil in China, and emigration from the country, also led to the development of a large Chinese diaspora. Moreover, thousands of foreigners lived and worked in China between the 1840s and the 1950s, and many thousands more visited for longer or shorter periods. Chinese emigrants, foreign expatriates and visitors alike took, bought or otherwise acquired photographs. Many of these are in libraries and collections in the West, and in addition our research in modern Chinese history has led us to many interesting private collections. Images from private and public collections are available here.
The project held an exhibition and published a companoion book, Picturing China 1870-1950: Photographs from British Collections (Chinese Maritime Customs Project Occasional Papers No.1, 2007, ISSN: 1755-6643)
Visit the website here: http://hpc.vcea.net/
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