History of Photography in China: Chinese Photographers 1844-1879.

This substantial book is 1.5" thick. Daguerreotypes, stereoviews, cabinet cards, cartes de visite. The most extensive survey of Chinese photographers working in China in the 1840s through the 1870s. The book also includes documentary appendices of the photographers' published works, a bibliography, chronologies and a biographical index. This book is the first extensive survey of early Chinese photographers in any language. It is profusely illustrated with more than 400 photographs, many of which are published here for the first time, including a fine selection of Foochow landscapes from the studios of Lai Fong, China's leading photographer during this period, and Tung Hing. Early chapters introduce the historical milieu from which the earliest Chinese photographers emerged and illuminate the beginnings of photography in China and contemporary Chinese reactions to its introduction. Early Chinese commercial photography - both portrait and landscape - are also discussed with reference to similar genres in a more international context. Individual chapters are devoted to Chinese photographers in Peking, Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai, Foochow, Amoy, Hankow, Tientsin and other ports, Macau and Formosa. These are followed by a series of appendices: writings on photography in China by John Thomson and Isaac Taylor Headland and an invaluable guide to the identification of photographs from the Afong Studio. It concludes with an extensive bibliography, general and regional chronologies, and a biographical index. Combining existing knowledge of the subject with a mass of new research material, this major work also introduces and identifies the work of a number of previously forgotten or overlooked Chinese masters. It includes the work of: Chow Kwa (Su Sanxin), Hing Qua John & Co., Jiu San & E Fong, Kai Sack, Kung Tai, Lai Chong, Lai Fong, Liang Shitai (See Tay), Luo Yuanyou, Man Foc, Pow Kee, Pun Lun, Sang Cheong, Tung Hing, Wo Cheong, Ye Chung and many others.