Drawing on works in museums, and archival and private collections across China, the United States, Europe, and Australia, Claire Roberts locates images from commercial, art, and documentary photography within the broader context of Chinese history. She focuses on the images as well as the studios and individuals who created them, describing the long tradition of Chinese artistic culture into which photography was first absorbed and subsequently expanded. As she recounts the stories of practitioners—from China and overseas—who were agents in that process of change, she also examines the commercial, political, and artistic purposes for which they used photography. Featuring one hundred striking, little-known images, Photography and China will make a significant contribution to photography, Chinese art, and twentieth-century history.

Claire Roberts is a curator and historian of Chinese art who has held research fellowships at Harvard University and the Australian National University. Her books include Friendship in Art: Fou Lei and Huang Binhong and Evolution and Revolution: Chinese Dress 1700s to Now.

— Frances Terpak, Curator of Photographs, Getty Research Institute

— Raymond Lum, Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University

— Roberta Wue, Journal of Asian Studies