Photography and the making of history in modern China

Conference programme

Wadham College, Oxford, December 17-18, 2012

Monday December 17thOkinaga Room, Wadham College

 9.00am Introductory remarks Margaret Hillenbrand

 9.15am-11.00am Panel 1: Photography, Technology, and Terminology,

Chair: Rana Mitter

9.15am-11.00 am

James Hevia, University of Chicago: “Stereoscopic Tours, Reconnaissance, and Photography”

Oliver Moore, Leiden University: “Photography’s Metaphors in China”


11.30am-1.15pm Panel 2: Photography and Subjectivity

Chair: Margaret Hillenbrand

Nicole Huang, University of Wisconsin, Madison: “The Trained Eye: Theorizing Studio Photography in Late Mao China”

Barbara Mittler, Heidelberg University: “Taking Pictures, Reading Minds: A View from China’s Vernacular Media, 1909-1939”

 2.30pm-4.15pm Panel 3: Photography and Contemporary Chinese Art

Chair: Professor Craig Clunas

 Ding Ning, Peking University: “Historical Photographs and Contemporary Chinese Art”

Ros Holmes, University of Oxford: “‘Paper Dreams’ and the Search for a ‘Better Life’: Visualizing wenming in Contemporary China”

 4.45pm-5.45pm Robert Bickers, University of Bristol:

Special Presentation: “An Archive for China: the Historical Photographs Project at Bristol University”


Tuesday, December 18th

 9.00am-10.45am Panel 4: Photography, Documentary, and Art

Chair: Craig Clunas

Claire Roberts, Australian National University: “Double Take: Some Thoughts on Artistic and Documentary Uses of Historic Photographs in China”

Jerome Silbergeld, Princeton University: “Documentation and Art in the Chinese Photograph”

11.20am-1.05pm Panel 5: Photography and Historical Consciousness

Chair: Henrietta Harrison

Margaret Hillenbrand, University of Oxford: “The Moving Medium: Historical Photographs and the Aesthetic Representation of China’s Twentieth-Century Past”

Yi Gu, University of Toronto: “Truth through Lens: Photography and the 1911 Revolution”

2.20am-4.05pm Panel 6: Photography and Colonial Space

Chair: Dirk Meyer

Régine Thiriez, Independent Scholar: “Early Photographs of the Pearl River Delta: Topographical Views of Canton, Macao and Hong Kong, 1842-1870”

Ju-Ling Lee, University of Lyon: “Photography in Colonial Taiwan (1895-1945)”

4.05pm Concluding remarks

 This conference has been generously supported by the following sponsors:

British Inter-University China Centre

“An Archive for China: Photographs from British Collections”, a British Academy “Academy Research Project”

The Persistence of Conflict: China’s War with Japan and its Impact, Memory and Legacy, 1931 to the Present”, a Leverhulme Trust Research Programme