cover image Brushes and Shutter: Early Photography in China

Brushes and Shutter: Early Photography in China

Edited by Jeffrey D. Cody and Frances Terpak, Getty (gettypublications.com), $45 (198p) ISBN 978-1-60606-054-4

In 1839, the year that the daguerreotype was invented, the West forcibly "opened up" China in the First Opium War, a confluence of events that brought photography to the country. In the early years, some Chinese feared that clicking shutters would steal their spirits or that photographers would steal their children's eyes as part of the process of picture-taking, but the country soon embraced the new art form. Covering the years 1859–1911, the book includes work by both Chinese and Western photographers whose work can seem similar, save for a preference in the Western photographers for a mannered, heavily stylized effect, as well as an unmistakably imperialist bias manifested in stereotypical images that art historian Wu Hung, in one of the catalogue's six fine essays, describes as "frozen in silent stillness." Aside from a few images of nature, all the photos reveal a country in rapid flux from urbanization and Western influences, and are a valuable historical tool. This sumptuous volume, which could have benefitted from at least one map of China as well as from a glossary—who knows where Swatow Harbor is or what is meant by "The Tao-Tai of Anching"?—is an eye-opening delight. (Feb.)