293
identifi ed, daguerreotype and lithographic Hong Kong
business in 1846. His advertisements start to appear in
the China Mail from October of that year. The earliest
dated photograph taken by a Chinese is a daguerreotype
portrait of General Ko-Lin which was auctioned in
Christie’s London on 19 October, 1994. The studio’s
printed label on this 1853 image carries the name of a
Shanghai photographer, Lai Chong. The ships of Com-
modore Perry’s 1852–54 Expedition to Japan spent some
time in Macau in 1853. Eliphalet Brown Jr., the offi cial
photographer, was known to have taken photographs
there but, to date, none has appeared. Another early view
in the writer’s collection is an 1857 photograph of the
town of Canton, just prior to the allied bombardment in
December of that year.
In Shanghai, the Frenchman Louis Legrand adver-
tised his watch and clock-making business which also
contained a photo-studio. The North China Herald issue
of 15 August, 1857 carried the following:
L. LEGRAND WATCH & CLOCK MAKER, near Mr. Smith’s
market. N.B.—PHOTOGRAPHS taken in the most elegant
style.
By September, 1858 Legrand was advertising stereo
portraits. He is also the photographer behind a com-
mercial series of Shanghai-scenery stereo views issued
in 1859 under the imprint of Legrand Freres & Cie.
However, these are not the fi rst commercial photographs
of China to be published. That honour goes to the Swiss
photographer, Pierre Rossier (1829–18??), who had
been commissioned by Negretti and Zambra, a success-
ful London-based fi rm specializing in the manufacture
and sale of photographic and scientifi c equipment, to
travel to the Far East and send back views for publication
in Europe and America. Without naming either photog-
rapher, the periodical La Lumiere, in its 17 March 1860
issue, reviews the work of both artists. Rossier started
putting together his Chinese stereo portfolio sometime
in 1858; this consisted of approximately eighty-fi ve
views and portraits. Apart from two Hong Kong views,
all the scenes were taken in Canton.
The American, Orrin Freeman (1830–66), arrived
in Shanghai from Boston with his ambrotype camera
and equipment in March 1859. His fi rst decision was to
open a studio inland at Soochow, rather than Shanghai.
However, after a few months he was back in Shanghai
issuing the following advertisement in the North China
Herald:
AMBROTYPES-AMBROTYPES. The undersigned respect-
fully begs to intimate to the Community that he is prepared
to take the Ambrotype likeness in a style superior to
anything hitherto offered in Shanghai. Charges low and
satisfaction guaranteed. Yang-king Pang Road, next door
to Messrs. H. Fogg & Co. ORRIN E. FREEMAN. Shanghai,
21st July, 1859.But by December that year, Freeman had closed his
studio and moved on to Japan. Commercial photography
in China in the 1840s and 1850s does not seem to have
been a very profi table enterprise.
William Nassau Jocelyn (1832–92) was an amateur
photographer who was attached to Lord Elgin’s suite
during the latter’s 1857–59 diplomatic missions to
China and Japan. Jocelyn arrived in Shanghai in July
1858, taking up the post of assistant secretary and
offi cial photographer. He was replacing one Robert
Morrison, who had been temporarily attached to Elgin’s
staff in China from April 1857. Very little is known
of Morrison, incidentally, and his work may not have
survived. A few of Jocelyn’s Chinese photographs,
however, can be found at the Victoria and Albert Mu-
seum, London.
Very little pre-1860 photography of China survives
today. Apart from a handful of missionaries and foreign
consuls, residents at the recently opened treaty ports
and in Hong Kong and Macau were focused on making
money, not on wielding cameras or patronizing studios.
There were really no foreign tourists, and access to the
interior of China was prohibited to all except a small
band of foreign diplomats and those on offi cial business.
No doubt there was some demand for portrait photogra-
phy, but those few foreign studios which did operate had
to work very hard to make a living. And photography
in China was never easy: The hot and humid summers
played havoc with chemicals, and supplies of fresh water
were not always easy to secure. Travelling inland over
unmade roads meant risking damage to glass plates and
equipment. Many Chinese were hostile to foreigners and
there was a general superstition about photography’s
ability to conjure up evil spirits. Photographers and/or
their equipment were, as a result, sometimes attacked.
Nevertheless, by the 1860s the population in the vari-
ous China coast settlements was increasing steadily and
the demand for photography was consequently rising
—albeit slowly.
Felix Beato (1834/5–ca.1907) arrived in Hong Kong
in early 1860, intending to photograph the climax to the
Second Opium War (1858–60). He was a seasoned and
competent professional, used to overcoming the practical
and technical diffi culties of photography in intemperate
climates. At Hong Kong he photographed the military
build-up of the Anglo-French forces and produced some
memorable panoramas. He moved on to Canton and
photographed the city whilst waiting for the expedition
to move north. In June and July more than 200 allied
warships sailed north, and in August Beato photographed
the aftermath of the storming of the Taku forts, south
of Peking. Beato also photographed Peking itself, after
the city was occupied, and he also captured views of the
Summer Palace, just before it was destroyed and looted
by the allied forces. These appear to be the earliest