Power and Perspective: Early Photography in China

In the 19th century, photography developed in China due to war, trade, travel, and a desire for knowledge about the unfamiliar. Power and Perspective: Photographs from the Treaty Port Cities of China and the West explores the exchanges between photographers, artists, patrons, and subjects in treaty port cities, addressing the colonial legacy of the medium and its representations of racial hierarchy.

Format: Hardback
Length: 340 pages
Publication date: 27 September 2022
Publisher: Yale University Press

A thorough reevaluation of photography's historical development is presented in this work, which delves into how commerce and conflict drove its practice in nineteenth-century China. The emergence of photography as a novel art and technology occurred concurrently with significant transformations in China's interactions with the rest of the world during the nineteenth century. The medium underwent evolution in response to various factors such as warfare, trade, travel, and a thirst for knowledge about unfamiliar territories.

Power and Perspective: Shaping Photographic Practices in Nineteenth-Century China offers a comprehensive exploration of the interactions between photographers, artists, patrons, and subjects in the treaty port cities that bridged China and the West. This extensively illustrated volume draws primarily from the Peabody Essex Museums historic and largely unpublished collection of photographs, providing a detailed examination of the confrontations and collaborations that shaped the adoption and practice of photography in China. By offering an original reinterpretation of the medium's colonial legacy, Power and Perspective addresses the representations of racial hierarchy and their entanglement with histories of European imperialism in nineteenth-century China.

This publication has been distributed by the Peabody Essex Museum for their upcoming exhibition schedule. The exhibition will be held at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, from September 24, 2022, to April 2, 2023.

Weight: 2260g
Dimension: 265 x 288 x 33 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780300263633