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The Chargesheimer Gesellschaft (Society).http://www.char-
gesheimer.de.PHOTOGRAPHY IN CHINA AND
TAIWAN
Photography in China
Photography arrived in China in the 1860s with
Western photographers who mostly made por-
traits. One of the most well-known of these photo-
graphers is Milton Miller, an American who owned
a photo studio in Hong Kong. He had taken for-
mal portraits of Cantonese merchants, Mandarins,
and their families in the early 1860s. The other is
the Scottish photographer John Thomson (1837–
1921), who owned a photo studio in Hong Kong.
Unlike Miller’s motifs, his were peasants and
workers—the underclass of the late 1860s and
early 1870s.
Studios run by Western photographers provided
Chinese photographers with practical training and
produced some photographers of note. Afong Lai
and Mee Cheng were active during this period,
and both managed to turn their interest to com-
mercial advantage. Ah Fong was active from the
1860s to 1880s, and in 1937 in Shanghai he pub-
lished a photo album entitledThe Sino-Japanese
Hostilities, presenting 110 black-and-white photo-
graphs, seen primarily as historical documents.
Some of his landscapes, however, express aesthetic
qualities reminiscent of traditional Chinese paint-
ing. Mee Cheung identified himself as a ‘‘High
Class Photographer,’’ clearly referring to fine-arts
aspirations, and is known for his documentary
snapshot-style photographs.
As the nineteenth century progressed and the
West became more and more fascinated with the
country, its culture and art forms, China attracted
numerous Western amateur and professional
photographers. Most were interested in capturing
images of historical importance. The Italian Felice
Beato, also known for his later work in Japan,
photographed landscapes and battle scenes in the
1860s. Englishman Thomas Childe completed a
series of photographs of Beijing and its environ-
ments in the early 1870s. During the first two
decades of the twentieth century, however, Wes-
tern photographers were discouraged and then
banned from taking photographs in China. Some
of the few that exist were taken by a young boy,
Walter J. Bronson, shooting surreptitiously as he
traveled about China with his family. M.E. Alonso
was a photographer for the Wulsin Expedition to
Northwest China in 1923, sponsored in part by the
National Geographic Society, which brought some
of the first photographs made of these territories
to the West. Donald Mennie, a British merchant,
shot landscapes in a pictorialist style in the 1920s.
In 1926 in Shanghai he published a photo album
entitledThe Grandeur of the Gorges, in which he
presented his 50 photographic studies of the
Yangtze River, along with 12 hand-colored prints.
He had previously published the portfoliosThe
Pageant of PekingandChin—North and South.Documentary Photography in China After 1911
In 1925, China was swept by the May 30thMove-
ment, an anti-imperialist movement in protest
against the massacre of the Chinese people by the
British police in Shanghai on that date. This move-
menthadagreatimpactonhowWesterninfluence
was received but also formally introduced modern
photography, especially photojournalism, to China,CHARGESHEIMER