Author Archives: Jamie Carstairs

Making popcorn

The Historical Photographs of China project team were delighted to see in a recently digitised album a sequence of three photographs showing popcorn being made the Chinese way, c.1938:   When this blogger was in Shanghai in 2011, I photographed … Continue reading

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Burning bright in the forests of the night

This tiger sculpture was in the Aw Boon Haw Gardens amusement park (Tiger Balm Gardens) in Happy Valley, Hong Kong. The Tiger Balm Gardens were a sort of Chinese Disneyland theme park, but somehow even more gaudy, ostentatious, sometimes bizarre, … Continue reading

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Isabella Lucy Bird – photographer and traveller

Mrs Isabella Lucy Bishop (née Bird), FRGS (1831-1904), was a remarkable traveller, writer, photographer, horsewoman and natural historian.  In 1892, she became the first woman inducted into the Royal Geographical Society and she was elected to membership of the Royal Photographic Society … Continue reading

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Christmas card

Compliments of the season to all friends of ‘Visualising China’ – and all best wishes for the road ahead.

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Location Location Location

As we digitise more material, more connections are elicited.  For example, a photograph (BL04-71) in the recently copied Love collection was captioned in the album ‘Great War Memorial Wei-Hai-Wei’.  Seeing this photograph brought to mind a photograph in the Ruxton … Continue reading

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Darwent Revisited: Shanghai now and then

Photography is the context, subtext and pretext for an exhibition that opens today.  The exhibition includes new photographs by Jamie Carstairs inspired by the text of Shanghai: A Handbook for Travellers and Residents, a guidebook to the city by Revd. … 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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The Song of the River

Porters would carry heavy loads and full pails up from the river into the city of Chungking, scaling long flights of steps, as in this photograph taken by Warren Swire: Steps in Taiping Men, Chungking, 1920.  See also Sw19-067, below.  … Continue reading

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Mid-day meal at a street food kitchen, Peking, 1915-1920

The Historical Photographs of China project was recently kindly given a copy of ‘The Pageant of Peking’.  Published in Shanghai in 1920 and bound in exquisite gold blocked turquoise silk, this coffee (or tea) table book is introduced by Putnam … Continue reading

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