This bibliography is a work in progress and will be constantly updated and amended as we come across new sources. New titles and recommendations are warmly welcomed.
• Key Readings
• Further Readings
• Theses
Key Readings
Bennett, Terry, Anthony Payne, and Lindsey Stewart. History of Photography in China : Chinese Photographers, 1844-1879. London: Quaritch, 2013.
Bennett, Terry. History of Photography in China : Western Photographers, 1861-1879. London: Quaritch, 2010.
———. History of Photography in China 1842-1860. London: Quaritch, 2009.
———. “China,” In Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, edited by John Hannavy. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2008.
Cody, Jeffrey W. and Frances Terpak. Brush and Shutter: Early Photography in China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press in association with the Getty Research Institute, 2011.
Gu, Zheng. Contemporary Chinese Photography. Harrow Middlesex: CYPI Press, 2011.
Henriot, Christian and Wen-Hsin Yeh. History in Images: Pictures and Public Space in Modern China. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2012.
———. Visualising China, 1845-1965: Moving and Still Images in Historical Narratives. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
Parr, Martin, and Zheng Gu. The Chinese Photobook: From the 1900s to the Present (Zhongguo sheying shu ji, 中國攝影書集). New York : Aperture, 2015.
Roberts, Claire. Photography and China. London: Reaktion Books, 2012.
Wu, Hung. Zooming In: Histories of Photography in China. London: Reaktion Books, 2016.
Wu Hung, and Christopher Phillips. Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China. 1st ed. ed. Chicago, Ill.: Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago ; New York, N.Y. : International Center of Photography ; Göttingen, Germany: Steidl Publishers, 2004.
Further Readings
1860-1930: Yingguo cang Zhongguo lishi zhaopian (1860-1930: 英国藏中国历史照片) [Western Eyes : Historical Photographs of China in British Collections, 1860-1930]. Beijing: Beijing tushuguan, 2008.
30 ans de photographie chinoise: 1930-1960. Saint-Denis: Presses de l'université de Vincennes, 1984.
Barron, Géraldine. “La Chine en daguerréotype.” Marine et science blog. Accessed November 13, 2014. http://paris.hypotheses.org/337#_ftn3.
Beers, Burton F., and Museum of the American China Trade. China in Old Photographs, 1860-1910. New York: Scribner, 1978.
Bertholet, Ferdinand M., Lambert van der Aalsvoort, and Régine Thiriez. Among the Celestials :China in Early Photographs. Antwerpen: Mercatorfonds, 2014.
Bessire, Mark. Stairway to Heaven: From Chinese Streets to Monuments and Skyscrapers. Hanover, N.H. ; London: University Press of New England ; Lewiston, Me. : Bates College Museum of Art, 2009.
Bickers, Robert A. Picturing China 1870-1950: Photographs from British Collections. Bristol: University Chinese Maritime Customs Project, 2007.
Birns, Jack, Carolyn Wakeman, and Ken Light. Assignment, Shanghai: Photographs on the Eve of Revolution. Berkeley, Calif. ; London: University of California Press, 2003.
Braester, Yomi. "Photography at Tiananmen: Pictorial Frames, Spatial Borders, and Ideological Matrixes." Positions: east asia cultures critique 18.3 (2010): 633-670.
Cameron, Nigel. The Face of China as Seen by Photographers & Travelers 1860-1912. Bentvelt-Aerdenhout: Landshoff, 1978.
Capa, Cornell and Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York N.Y.). Behind the Great Wall of China: Photographs from 1870 to the Present. Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1972.
Cartier-Bresson, Henri, Michel Frizot, Ying-lung Su, Stuart Alexander, and Joséphine . Wispelaere. Henri Cartier-Bresson: Chine, 1948-1949, 1958. Paris: Delpire, 2019.
Cécile Léon Art Projects. Xianggang Zui Zaoqi Zhaopian 1858-1875 (香港最早期照片) [First photographs of Hong Kong]. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Chin, Hsiao-yi. A Pictorial History of the Republic of China: Its Founding and Development. Taipei: Modern China Press, 1981.
Chiu, Patricia, Edward Stokes, and Xingru Chen. Lee Fook Chee's Hong Kong: Photographs from the 1950s. Hong Kong : Photographic Heritage Foundation Ltd : Commercial press (H.K.) Ltd., 2015.
Crow, Denis George. "Collecting Historic Photography of China." Arts of Asia 36, no. March/April (2006): 117-28.
Dao, Zi. "True Lies: New Reportage Photography in China." ART AsiaPacific 13 (1997): 61-65.
Davies, David J. "Old Zhiqing Photos: Nostalgia and the "spirit" of the Cultural Revolution." China Review. 5.2 (2005): 97-123.
Dewar, Susan. "Imagining Reality: Contemporary Chinese Photography." ART AsiaPacific 3, no. 2 (1996): 55-59.
Falconer, John and Régine Thiriez. Images de la Chine : Photographies 1870-1890. Paris: Editions du Pacifique, 2002.
Gao, James Z. "Shooting Social Suffering: Photography and China's Human Disasters." The Chinese Historical Review. 18.2 (2011): 99-124
Gardella, Robert. "Tea Processing in China, Circa 1885 a Photographic Essay." Business History Review. 75 (2001): 807-812.
Gartlan, Luke."'A Complete Craze': Isabella Bird Bishop in East Asia." Photoresearcher 15 April (2011): 13-26.
Gartlan, Luke, and Roberta Wue. Portraiture and Early Studio Photography in China and Japan. Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.
Ghesquière, Jérôme. De la Mer de Chine au Tonkin : photographies 1886 - 1904 ; [cet ouvrage a été édité à l'occasion de l'Exposition De la Mer de Chine au Tonkin présentée à Toulouse au Musée Paul-Dupuy du 1er juillet au 30 septembre 1996]. Paris: Somogy Éd. d'Art, 1996.
Ghesquière, Jérôme, John Falconer, Gael Newton, Frances Terpak, Claude Estèbe, and Sebastian Dobson. La Photographie Ancienne En Asie. Paris: Musée national des Arts Asiatiques - Guimet, 2016.
Ghesquière, Jérôme, and Sophie Makariou. L'Asie des Photographes. Paris : Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2018.
Gu, Yi. "What's in a Name? Photography and the Reinvention of Visual Truth in China, 1840-1911." The Art Bulletin 95, no. 1 (2013): 120-138.
———. "Prince Chun through the Lens: Negotiating to Photographic Medium in Royal Images." Ars Orientalis 43 (2013): 125-138.
———. "Photography And Its Chinese Origins." In Photography and Its Origins, edited by Tanya Sheehan and Andrés M. Zervigón. New York ; London : Routledge, 2015.
Heinrich, Larissa N. "The Pathological Empire: Early Medical Photography in China." History of Photography. 30 (2006).
Ho, Eliza. Art, Documentary, and Propaganda in Wartime China: The Photography of Sha Fei. Columbus, OH: East Asian Studies Center, Ohio State University, 2009.
Ho, Joseph W. "Cameras and Conversions: Crossing Boundaries in American Catholic Missionary Experience and Photography in Modern China." U.S. Catholic Historian. 34.2 (2016): 93-120.
Hu, Zhichuan (鬍誌川), and Shen Chen (陳申). Zhongguo Zaoqi Sheying Zuopinxuan 1840-1919 (中國早期攝影作品選 1840-1919) [A Collection of Pictures of Early-Period Chinese Photography]. Beijing: China Photography Publishing House, 1987.
Huang, Jian. "Photography and Ideology in Revolutionary China: A Critical Review." Modern China Studies, Vol. 23 Issue 1 (2016): 59-74.
Hudson, James J. "Discontinuous Elements: Nationalism, Poverty, and Representation in Sidney Gamble's Photographs of China (1917-1927)." The Chinese Historical Review. 18.1 (2011): 56-80.
Jiang, Jiehong. An Era Without Memories: Chinese Contemporary Photography on Urban Transformation. London: Thames and Hudson, 2015.
Jones, Andrew F. "Portable Monuments: Architectural Photography and The "Forms" Of Empire in Modern China." Positions 18, no. 3 (2010): 599-631.
Kim, Gyewon. "Tracing the Emperor: Photography, Famous Places, and the Imperial Progresses in Prewar Japan." Representations 120, no. 1 (2012): 115-150.
Krebs, Ed, and Hanchao Lu. China in Family Photographs: A People's History of Revolution and Everyday Life. Encino, California : Bridge21 Publications, Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge 2018.
Laing, Ellen Johnston. "Picturing Men and Women in the Chinese 1911 Revolution." Nan Nu. 15.2 (2013): 265-316.
Lang, Jingshan (郎靜山). Sheying dashi Lang Jingshan (攝影大師郎靜山) [Lang Jingshan: Master Photographer]. Beijing: Zhongguo Sheying chuban she, 2003.
Lee, Ju-Ling. Imaginer l'indigène: La photographie coloniale à Taïwan [1895-1945]. Paris: Hémisphères éditions : Maisonneuve & Larose, 2020.
Lin, Wei-Cheng. "Preserving China: Liang Sicheng's Survey Photos from the 1930s and 1940s." Visual Resources 27, no. 2 (2011): 129-45.
Lindesay, William. The Great Wall Revisited: From the Jade Gate to Old Dragon's Head. 2nd ed. ed. Beijing: China Intercontinental Press, 2009.
Liu, Heung Shing. China: Portrait of a Country by 88 Chinese Photographers. Hong Kong ; London: Taschen, 2008.
———. China in Revolution : The Road to 1911. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011.
Liu, Pei-ssu, and Qixian Xu. Gugong Zhenzang Renwu Zhaopian Huicui [Exquisite Figure-Pictures from the Palace Museum]. Beijing: Forbidden City Publishing House of the Palace Museum, 1994.
Liu, Yu-jen. "Second Only to the Original: Rhetoric and Practice in the Photographic Reproduction of Art in Early Twentieth-Century China." Art History. 37.1 (2014): 68-95.
Ma, Yunzeng (馬運增), and Zhichuan Hu (胡誌川). Zhongguo Sheying Shi 1840-1937 (中國攝影史) [History of photography in China]. Beijing: Zhongguo sheying chubanshe, 1987.
Millichap, John. 3030: New Photography in China. Shanghai: 3030 Press, 2006.
Minick, Scott, and Ping Jiao, Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990.
Missions archéologiques francaises en Chine: photographies et itinéraires, 1907-1923. Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2004.
Moore, Oliver. "Photography in China: A Global Medium Locally Appropriated." IIAS Newsletter 44, no. 6 (2007): 7.
———. "Zou Boqi on Vision and Photography in Nineteenth-Century China." In The human tradition in Modern China, edited by Kenneth James Hammond and Kristin Eileen Stapleton, 33-53. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.
Morris, Rosalind C. Photographies East: The Camera and Its Histories in East and Southeast Asia. Durham, N.C. ; London: Duke University Press, 2009.
Musée Albert Kahn. Chine 1909-1934 : Catalogue Des Photographies et des Séquences Filmées Du Musée Albert-Kahn. Boulogne-Billancourt: Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, 2001.
Ortells-Nicolau, Xavier. "Juan Mencarini and Amateur Photography In Fin-de-Siècle China." Kritika Kultura 30 (2018): 49-87.
Pang, Laikwan. "Photography, Performance, and the Making of Female Images in Modern China." Journal of Women's History (online). (2005): 56-85.
Pearce, Nick. “A novel experiment: John Thomson's Illustrations of China and its People and the beginnings of photographic publishing.“ National Palace Museum Bulletin 44 (2011): 49-65.
———. “A life in Peking: the Peabody albums.” History of Photography 31.3 (2007): 276-293.
———. Photographs of Peking, China 1861-1908: An Inventory and Description of the Yetts Collection at the University of Durham: Through Peking with a Camera. Lewiston, N.Y. ; Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005.
Peng, Ying-chen. "Lingering between Tradition and Innovation: Photographic Portraits of Empress Dowager Cixi." Ars Orientalis 43 (2013): 157-175.
Phillips, Christopher, Wu Hung, and Weiwei Ai. Life and Dreams: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Media Art. New York: The Walther Collection, 2018
Pholsena, Vatthana. “Technology and Empire: A Colonial Narrative of the Construction of the Tonkin–Yunnan Railway.” Critical Asian Studies, 47:4 (2015): 537-557.
Pickowicz, Paul, Kuiyi Shen, and Yingjin Zhang. Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 1926-1945. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
Reviers, de M. J, Christine Cornet, and François Verdier. Paysans de l'eau, 1932. Arles: Actes sud, 2003.
Schaefer, William. Shadow Modernism: Photography, Writing, and Space in Shanghai, 1925-1937. Durham : Duke University Press, 2017.
Shanghai Sheying Shi (上海攝影史) [History of Photography in Shanghai]. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin meishu chubanshe, 1992.
Shanghai tushuguan cang lishi yuanzhao (上海圖書館藏歷史原照) [Original historical photos in the Shanghai Library collections]. Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 2007.
Spence, Jonathan D., and Ann-ping Chin. The Chinese Century: A Photographic History. London: HarperCollins, 1996.
Suchomel, Filip, Marcela Suchomelová, and Hana Dvoráková. ---And the Chinese Cliffs Emerged out of the Mist : Perception and Image of China in Early Photographs. Revnice: Arbor vitae, 2011.
Sun, Wanning. "Amateur Photography As Self-Ethnography: China's Rural Migrant Workers and the Question of Digital-Political Literacy." Media International Australia. (2012): 135-144.
Thiriez, Régine. "Les Palais Européens du Yuanmingyuan à travers la photographie : 1860-1940." Arts asiatiques Volume 45 (1990): 90-96.
———. Barbarian Lens : Western Photographers of the Qianlong Emperor's European Palaces. Australia: Gordon and Breach, 1998.
———. "Ligelang: A French Photographer in 1850s Shanghai." Orientations no. 32, Part 9 (2001): 49-54.
———. "Imperial China in Postcards." Orientations 35, no. 5 (2004): 46-51.
———. “China.” and “Sze Yuen Ming.” In The Oxford Companion to the Photograph, edited by Robin Lenman, 120; 615. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Titus, Felicitas. Old Beijing: Postcards from the Imperial City. Clarendon: Tuttle Publishing, 2016.
Tong, Bingxue (仝冰雪). Zhongguo zhaoxiangguan shi (1859-1956) (中國照相館史) [The History of Chinese photographic studios]. Beijing: Zhongguo sheying chubanshe, 2016.
———. Beiyang Zongtong Fu Daliguan (北洋總統府大禮官) [The Grand Master of Ceremonies of Beiyang Government]. Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2012.
———. Shibohui Zhongguo Liuying 1851-1940 (世博會中國留影) [China's Images at the World Expos]. Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexueyuan chubanshe, 2010.
———. Yi Zhan Yi Zuo Yi Sheng: Yi Ge Zhongguo Ren 62 Nian De Yingxiang Zhi (一站一坐一生 : 一個中國人62年的影像誌) [Six Decades of a Chinese Life in Photographs]. Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexueyuan chubanshe, 2010.
———. Shibohui Jiangpai shoucang Yu Jianshang 1851-1958 (世博會獎牌收藏與鑒賞) [Medals of the World Expos]. Shanghai Shi: Shanghai shehui kexueyuan chubanshe, 2009.
Wang, Ban. “In Search of Real-Life Images in China: Realism in the Age of Spectacle.” The Journal of Contemporary China 17. 56 (August 2008). 496-512.
Wang, Cheng-hua. “New Printing Technology and Heritage Preservation: Collotype Reproduction of Antiquities in Modern China, circa 1908-1917.” In The Role of Japan in Modern Chinese Art, edited by Joshua A. Fogel, 273-373. Berkeley, California: Global, Area, and International Archive/University of California Press, 2012.
Wang, Eugene Y. "Perceptions of Change, Changes in Perception : West Lake as Contested Site/Sight in the Wake of the 1911 Revolution." Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Fall Special Issue, no. 2 (2000): 73-122.
Wang, Meiqin. "Advertising the Chinese Dream: Urban Billboards and Ni Weihua’s Documentary Photography." China Information. 29.2 (2015): 176-201.
Wexler, Laura. ""the Bridge Connecting Them to Ourselves": Childhood, Photography and Memory in Contemporary China." The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth. 4.1 (2011): 3-10.
Worswick, Clark, and Jonathan D. Spence. Imperial China: Photographs 1850-1912. New York: Pennwick Publishing: [distributed by] Crown, 1978.
Wu, Hung. A Story in Ruins : Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture. London: Reaktion, 2012.
Wu, Hung and Peggy Wang. Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents. New York: Museum of Modern Art ; Durham, N.C. : Distributed by Duke University Press, 2010.
Wu, Qun (吳群). Zhongguo Sheying Licheng (中國攝影歷程) [Historical Developments of Chinese Photography]. Beijing: Xinhua Chubanshe, 1986.
Wu, Shengqing. Photo Poetics: Chinese Lyricism and Modern Media Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020.
Wu, Suxin (伍素心). Zhongguo Sheying Shihua (中國攝影史話) [Topics in the History of Chinese Photography]. Shenyang: Liaoling Meishu Chubanshe, 1984.
Wue, Roberta. Art Worlds: Artists, Images, and Audiences in Late Nineteenth-Century Shanghai. Honolulu : University of Hawaiʻi Press/HKU Press, 2014.
———. "The Mandarin at Home and Abroad Picturing Li Hongzhang." Ars Orientalis 43 (2013): 140-156.
———. "Selling the Artist: Advertising, Art, and Audience in Nineteenth-Century Shanghai." The Art Bulletin 91, no. 4 (2009): 463-480.
———. Picturing Hong Kong : Photography 1855-1910. New York: Asia Society Galleries in association with South China Printing Company, 1997.
———. "China in the World: On Photography, Montages, and the Magic Lantern." History of Photography, 41:2 (2017): 171-187.
Yang, Chia-Ling. "The Crisis of the Real – Photography and Portraiture in Late Nineteenth Shanghai." In Looking Modern : East Asian Visual Culture from Treaty Ports to World War Ii, edited by Jennifer Purtle and Hans Bjarne Thomsen, 20-37. Chicago: Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago, 2009.
Ye, Xiaoqing. The Dianshizhai Pictorial: Shanghai Urban Life, 1884-1898. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, the University of Michigan, 2003.
Yuan, Dongping (袁冬平). Zhongguo Gushi: Dangdai Zhongguo Jishi Sheying (中國故事 : 當代中國紀實攝影) (Contemporary Chinese Documentary Photography). Haerbin Shi: Heilongjiang jiaoyu chubanshe, 2001.
Zhang, Ming (張明). Waiguoren paishe de zhongguo yingxiang: 1844-1949 (外國人拍攝的中國影像). Beijing: Zhongguo Sheying Chubanshe, 2008.
Zhang, Zongren, Petr Nedoma, Susan Acret, Galerie Enrico Navarra, and Galerie Rudolfinum. A Strange Heaven: Contemporary Chinese Photography. Hong Kong: Asia Art Archive, 2003.
Zhou, Dan. "Chinese Photography: Witness to Change." In Contemporary Chinese Visual Culture: Tradition, Modernity, and Globalization, edited by Christopher Crouch, 343-58. Amherst, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2010.
Theses
Cabos, Marine. "Seeing Through Landscape: French Photographic Archives of China (1840s-1930s)." PhD diss., University of London, 2016.
Chan, Marylois Chan. "Le pouvoir dans l'étendue. Victor Segalen's Photographic encounter with China." PhD diss., University of London, 1995.
Chen, Hsueh Sheng. “Art Photography in China beofre 1949: The Continuation and Transformation of an Elite Culture.” PhD diss., University of Melbourne, 2010.
Chen, Shi. “Early Chinese photographers from 1840 to 1870 innovation and adaptation in the development of Chinese photography.” PhD diss., University of Florida. 2009.
Garan, Frédéric. “Itinéraires photographiques, de la Chine aux "Missions Catholiques" (1880-1940) perception de la Chine à travers les archivers photographiques des O.P.M. et la revue des "Missions Catholiques.” PhD diss., University of Lille III, 1999.
Gu, Yi. "Scientizing Vision in China : Photography, Outdoor Sketching, and the Reinvention of Landscape Perception, 1912-1949." PhD diss., Brown University, 2009.
Li, Shi. “Full circle in the square: Photography practices in the People's Republic of China, 1976-1989.” PhD diss., Indiana University, 2015.
Tu, Yi Fei. “De l'encre à la lumière, de l'Occident à l'Orient, le paysage exprimé." PhD diss., Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux III, Bordeaux, 2009.
Ortells-Nicolau, Xavier. "Urban demolition and the aesthetics of recent ruins in experimental photography from China." PhD diss., Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2015.