Tag Archives: photography

Location/Dislocation – Admiral Keppel, the Chinese Buddha at Sandringham and three key photographs

Jamie Carstairs (Special Collections, University of Bristol Library) is researching the work of Charles Frederick Moore (1838-1916). In this post, Photodetective Carstairs reinvestigates a photographic cold case… In my mind, three golden Buddhas lined up in a row, as if … Continue reading

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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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Pieces of China in Bristol – cataloguing Historical Photographs of China material

Jamie Carstairs has recently catalogued the ‘Historical Photographs of China’ material held in Special Collections, University of Bristol Library. In this post, he describes the material in outline and mentions some highlights. During the fifteen years of the Historical Photographs … Continue reading

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Trading Places, a photographic journey through China’s former Treaty Ports

Nicholas Kitto describes the project which culminated in the recent publication of his book ‘Trading Places, A Photographic Journey Through China’s Former Treaty Ports’ (Blacksmith Books)  It was quite late on 16 December 1996, and I was walking along Racecourse … Continue reading

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Guangzhou: The Southern Gateaway

Alejandro Acin, photographer and project assistant at the Historical Photographs of China, recently participated in a learning exchange programme in Guangzhou – a collaboration between the University of Bristol and the University of Lancashire. The project is part of the … Continue reading

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Typologies, memories and preservation

There are few photographers with a body of work as obsessively cohesive as that of the German collaborative artists Bern and Hilla Becher.  The duo, Bernhard “Bernd” Becher (1931 – 2007) and Hilla Becher (born 1934), are best known for … Continue reading

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The time in between

A guest blog from Alejandro Acin: I sometimes feel that street photography has become just a game where photographers try to create simple easy to understood messages in standalone photographs often meant to be amusing. There are many exceptions of … 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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