Tag Archives: photography

Revisiting Darwent's Shanghai

Our pop-up exhibition, ‘Darwent Revisited: Shanghai now and then’, is unveiled on Saturday 9th February, at the Bristol City Museum, and then on Sunday 10th February at the city’s new M-Shed museum.  Funded by the AHRC and the British Academy, It … Continue reading

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Sailing on

We have been on our holidays, but were also overwhelmed by correspondence resulting from July’s BBC Radio 4 documentary about the project, ‘Old Photographs Fever‘, and the accompanying BBC News slideshow. Many wonderful new collections were offered to us, and … Continue reading

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A photographer’s view

The great photographer Diane Arbus once observed that ‘a photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.’  NA07-107 is the very picture of such secretive photography, if only because it is such … Continue reading

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Studio portrait of a Chinese woman

This striking photograph (JC-s037), with strong diagonals in the style of Alexander Rodchenko, may well be the work of an unidentified Chinese studio photographer working in the racy, cosmopolitan Shanghai of the 1930s. The precise combination printing and the masterly … Continue reading

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The Great Wall of China at Badaling

One of the world’s most famous structures, the Great Wall of China has been much photographed.  Surprisingly though for such a massive and extensive landmark, many visitors, including John Thomson in 1871, photographed the same section – around Badaling.  Here … Continue reading

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Photographs of photographers: Maude Carrall

The ‘Blossoms’ looks like an orchard of either apple or cherry trees, which was probably in, or close to, Chefoo (Yantai).  It must have been a favourite springtime picnic spot for the Carrall family, as their photograph albums hold several … Continue reading

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Photographs of photographers: Warren Swire

Photographs of photographers with their cameras are not often found in their own albums of photographs.   So it was good to find a snap of Warren Swire with an unidentified woman wearing jodhpurs, taken by Ann Phipps (ph04-045).   Ann was … Continue reading

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You press the button, we do the rest

Here then is ‘the rest’: at this Kodak Professional School in Shanghai in 1923, students are learning to spool and process negatives, enlarge, develop, fix and dry prints, then guillotine and dry mount them – the skilful practical application of … Continue reading

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