Category Archives: Digitisation

Charles Frederick Moore’s photographs of the ruins of the European-style palaces (西洋楼) at the Yuanmingyuan (圆明园)

Jamie Carstairs (Senior Digitisation Officer, Special Collections, University of Bristol Library) is researching the work of Charles Frederick Moore (1838-1916), and here discusses Moore’s photographs of the ruins of the European-style, baroque palaces at the Yuanmingyuan. When the vast and … Continue reading

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Happy birthday to us!

It’s our birthday! Fourteen years ago today, Historical Photographs of China welcomed its first and longest-standing employee, Project Manager Jamie Carstairs. A professional photographer, sometime cheerful bookshop assistant (so he told us), TEFL teacher and graduate of the postgraduate Photojournalism … Continue reading

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Charles Frederick Moore (1837-1916), a photographer in China

Jamie Carstairs, who manages the Historical Photographs of China Project, follows up  serendipitous events, leading to a rabbit hole, in which a ‘new’ nineteenth century China photographer was found. ‘Mr. C. F. Moore, in the service of the Customs at Ningpo, … Continue reading

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In and outside the combat zone: The Regimental Museums Project (2)

Dr Andrew Hillier completes his introduction to The Regimental Museums Project by discussing some of the more nuanced aspects of military photography and the importance of regimental archives. Aside from Felix Beato’s photographs of the Second Opium War, referred to … Continue reading

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Found object

Some of the photographs and negatives we are presented with are beyond salvage, but it can be worth persevering. The following episode has no China connection, but perhaps indicates what might be done with any seemingly hopeless case. It is also … Continue reading

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Best seasonal wishes from the HPC team

It’s been another very busy year at the Historical Photographs of China (HPC) project. Here’s news of some of our achievements. The Chinese Year of the Horse kicked off with a new exhibition at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery in … Continue reading

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Lucky Eights: 8888 photographs now online

The project just posted its 8,888th photograph. 8 is an auspicious number in Chinese culture because of its closeness in sound to the word for wealth/fortune across a number of dialects. Companies compete for telephone numbers with multiple eights, and … Continue reading

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Art imitates art

One of the images (on the right) in Historical Photographs of China, features the same compositional idea as Angus McBean’s photograph (below) of the theatre designer and producer William Chappell (1907-1994) – juggling heads.  This brought to mind Geoff Dyer’s The Ongoing … Continue reading

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Who took the photograph, reprised?

BL-n087 is a photograph of a photographer taking a photograph.  You may be able to identify the photographer at work, if you recognise the photograph he probably took here: a scene including a human corpse and battle debris – the … Continue reading

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Magical pagodas

A guest blog from Dr Tehyun Ma: This rather magical photo, taken by postal official Oliver Hulme around the turn of the century, is one of my favourites. Looking at the structure, which was probably in the vicinity of Hebei, … Continue reading

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