Chinese Studies

Sidney D. Gamble (1890-1968), an avid amateur photographer, began taking pictures in China during his first trip to the country with his family in 1908. He returned three more times between 1917 to 1932 and continued photographing the daily life of Chinese citizens. A sociologist and renowned China scholar, he traveled throughout the country to collect data for social-economic surveys and to photograph urban and rural life, public events, architecture, religious statuary, and the countryside. Gamble used a few of the photographs from his extensive collection in his scholarly publications (https://guides.library.duke.edu/Gamblephotos/research) and in slide lectures, the majority of images were never published or exhibited during his lifetime.

Bound photograph album containing 48 photographs taken by Sir Percy Moleworth Sykes during his travels in a mountainous region of Central Asia, now the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, with his sister, Ella Sykes.

The album probably belonged to Friedrich Carl Peetz, most likely an officer in the German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) and crew member of the S.M.S. Hertha during the Boxer Rebellion. The images were mostly taken in Tsingtao (Qingdao), Chefoo (Yantai), Hong Kong, Peking (Beijing), and Shanhaiguan during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.

Morrison studied photography in her native Germany before leaving in 1933 for a position as manager of Hartung’s Photo Shop in the Legation Quarter of Peking, now Beijing. From 1938 until she and her husband left China in 1946, Morrison worked as a freelance photographer.

The Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr., an American Episcopal priest who worked for many years as a missionary to Muslims in Western China. Over 1,000 photos of Muslims and Christian missionaries working among them in Western China in the 1920s and 1930s form the core of this collection.

Rev. Carter D. Holton was an American missionary working in Northwest China from 1923 to 1949. During that time, he documented the cultural life of many ethnic minorities in the Gansu and Qinghai regions.

The EAIC documents the history of imperial Japan (1868-1945), its Asian empire (1895-1945) and occupied Japan (1947-52). Images of Taiwan 台湾, Japan 日本, China 中国, Korea 朝鮮, Manchuria 満洲国, and Indonesia are included. The Collection is built around a core of visual materials donated to Skillman Library Special Collections by the family of Gerald and Rella Warner. Images unique to this collection include the Warners’ unpublished slides and negatives , made from snapshots taken during their years of US State Department service in Asia (1932-1952). Rare materials include prewar picture postcards, high-quality commercial prints, and colonial era picture books.

Stafford was an American missionary in China from 1909 to 1915 and 1932 to 1933. A lithographer and photographer, he arrived in Shanghai in 1909 and was hired by the Commercial Press-then Asia's largest publishing company--to manage its printing division from 1909 to 1915. During the onset of the Wuchang Uprising in October 1911, Stafford was on hand to capture remarkable photos of the Qing Dynasty's collapse.The collection, which consists of nearly 1,100 images, includes the largest number of surviving original photographic prints of the Chinese Revolution of 1911.

Miss Elsie Anderson spent seventeen years in China as a Secretary for Young Women's Christian Association of China (YWCA) 中華基督教女青年會 between 1920s-1940s. She went to China around 1918 and worked in YWCA organizations in various places, including Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shandong, Tianjin, etc. She was also involved with True Light Middle School in Guangzhou (真光女子中学). The collection includes more than 2900 photos, one diary and some slides and postcards. The site currently features selective photographs from the collection.

The photographs were taken from 1944-1945 by Barney Rosset, then a young American Army photographer. Rosset documented the Chinese Army in their pursuit of Japanese troops following the Battle of Henan-Hunan-Guangxi. The Japanese Army was pulling back from the Ichi-Go operation, the largest Japanese land campaign of the war, and Rosset joined Chinese troops at the deepest point of Japanese penetration (Kweiyang).

Photographs in this collection include ones taken by individual missionaries as well as on behalf of missionary agencies and institutions.

The historical images in the International Mission Photography Archive come from Protestant and Catholic missionary collections held at a number of centers in Britain, Europe, and North America.

presents over 28,000 images from the holdings of the American Geographical Society (AGS) Library.

The collection consists of 1,090 images. It includes a unique set of 50 photographs of central Tibet and Lhasa taken by two Mongolian Buddhists, G. Ts. Tsybikoff and Ovshe Norzunoff, who visited Tibet in 1900 and 1901. The photographs represent the first photographic images of Potala Palace in Lhasa and other Tibetan monasteries. In addition, over 1,000 images of Tibet have been drawn from the extensive photographic collection of Harrison Forman. Photojournalist and explorer, Forman undertook three expeditions to remote areas of northern Tibet between 1932 and 1937.

Haldore Hanson graduated from Carleton College in the spring of 1934. In July of 1937, the Associated Press hired Mr. Hanson as a part-time & free-lance war correspondent. The photographs that he took include scenes from battles between the Japanese forces and the forces of the Eighth Route Army, images of destroyed towns and villages, and scenes that give insights into the daily lives and character of members of the guerilla forces. During his travels he was also able to interview Mao Zedong and other prominent Communist leaders.

an open-access platform that inventories photographic archives of China located in France.

A joint project by School of Humanities, University of Bristol, UK & Institut d'Asie Orientale (IAO), Lyon, France. The archived collections include featured collections and photographers on Chinese diplomat, foreign businessmen, staff of the administrations in the Chinese treaty ports, missionaries, and officials of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service.

From Kyoto university, a digital archive of more than 38,000 photographs taken in northern China during the Japanese occupation.

Collections are on China or relate to China, most of them before the 1960s.

Virtual Shanghai started as a project focused on Shanghai historical photographs. It emerged in 2000 as a collaborative project between the Institut d’Asie Orientale (CNRS-University of Lyon) and the Center for Chinese Studies of the University of California, Berkeley. Virtual Shanghai represents an attempt at writing the history of the city through the combined use of textual (essays, original documents), visual (photographs, movies, images, drawings, etc.), sound (sound tracks, tunes, etc.) and cartographic documents. In its present stage, it provides mostly essays and textual records, photographs, and maps.

Presents more than 6000 photographs spanning 30 years of Tibet's history, taken by Charles Bell, Arthur Hopkinson, Evan Nepean, Hugh Richardson, Frederick Spencer Chapman, Harry Staunton and the previously unidentified photographs of Rabden Lepcha.