What's in a Name? Photography and the Reinvention of Visual Truth in China, 1840–1911

Yi Gu

45 citations0/0 files storedThe Art Bulletin

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Photographic and Visual Arts Visual Culture and Art Theory Photography and Visual Culture

Abstract

More than a dozen appellations for photography circulated in China between 1840 and 1911. These designations—from preexisting terms denoting portrait painting to newly coined words such as zhaoxiang (reflecting a portrait with a mirror) and sheying (seizing shadow)—reveal how photography was described, evaluated, categorized, and understood in relation to other visual practices, including painting. Studying the naming of the medium in China not only historicizes the conception of photography but also traces the emergence of a new understanding of visual truth that triggered a reconfiguration in all realms of the production and evaluation of modern Chinese art.

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1975Photography, Vision, and Representation

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2018Darkroom Material: Race and the Chromogenic Print Process 2022Visual evidence? Rethinking anthropological photography in republican China (1912–1949)

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