Portraits from Chino, 1923-1946, explores the allowed to work in China-both Chinese a nd offered vicarious social and economic mobil ­ relationship between photographer and subject. non-Chinese actively photographed Chi nese ity. Through photography, anyone could pay Three pairs of eyes-the professional photogra­ people, street life, and landscapes. In China, to be someone important for an hour, and, pher Hedda Hammer Morrison, the self-made as in many other parts of the world, the with the printed photograph in his posses­ scholar Owen Lattimore, and the naturalist­ photographers' subject matter changed sion, could be that person for all time. After anthropologist Frederick Wulsin-offer us vivid dramatically during the nineteenth and early the end of the Cultu ral Revolution in 1976, portraits of China in a turbulent time. Morrison's twentieth centuries, moving from formal to many Chinese resumed their love affair with peddlers in the streets of Beijing, Lattimore's sol­ less formal portraits, from studios to city the camera as thousands of photographic diers in the Communist Party bastian of Yon' an, streets, from grand buildings and landscapes studios reappeared. and Wulsin's lamas in the temples af Wangyefu to ceremonies and handicrafts. Of the th ree photographers hig hl ighted dramatize China's geographic and cultural com­ In China, portraiture became the stock­ in th is exhibit, Hedda Morrison is the only plexity. These portraits are products af the imag­ in-trade of Chinese and European photogra­ professional; Lattimore and Wulsin belong ination: the result of collaboration between the phers. For Chinese consumers, portrait to a different tradition of expedition, journa l­ sitter and the photographer ar of the photogra­ photography had many appeals, with istic, and scholarly photographers. Less con­ pher's control of the captured image. immortality ranking high among its attrac­ cerned with the aesthetics of the fin ished Photography arrived in China in the tions. Having a realistic rather than an print, they saw their photographs as illustra­ early 1840s, only a few years after the idealized, painted image of a parent or tions for their academic and journalistic invention of the daguerreotype. For more grandparent on the ancestral altar was a writings. than 150 years-excluding the Maoist peri­ strong motiva tion for commissioning photo­ od ( 194 9-1 976) when few foreigners were graphic portraits. Photographic portraits a lso Hedda Hammer Morrison ( 1908-1991) Frederick R. Wulsin ( 1891-1961 ), a professional anthropologist, Lattimore, Owen. China Memoirs : Chiang Kai-Shek and the trained at the State Institute far Photography began his career as an explorer and natural history collector in War Against Japan . Compiled by Fu ji ko lsono. in Munich, Germany, and traveled to Beijing Africa and China. In 1923, Wulsin obtained National Geographic Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1990. in 1933, where she became the manager of Society funding for an expedition through western Inner Mongolia Morrison, Hedda. A Photographer in Old Peking. Hartung's, a German-owned photography stu­ and northwest China, where he collected specimens, took many New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. dio. She left Hartung's in 1938 to work as a photographs, and kept copious nates on his journey. Of the more Roberts, Cla ire, ed. In Her View: The Photographs of Hedda freelance photographer. She lived in Beijing than 2,000 photographs that Wulsin produced during this expedi­ Morrison in China and Sarawak, 1933-61. until 1946 when she moved to Hong Kong . tion, only 36 were published. Wulsin's favorite camera was a 4 x 5 Haymarket, NSW: Powerhouse Publishing, 1993. Working with a Rolleiflex camera and a bicy­ Graflex, and he and his wife, Janet, did some of their own devel­ Thiriez, Regine. "Photography and Portraiture in Nineteenth­ cle, Morrison photographed Beijing street life oping on the journey. Many of his best portraits were made in Century China." East Asian History 17/ 18 (1999): 77-102. and created hundreds of inform~l portraits of Wangyefu, the seat of a Mongolian principality, where the Wulsin, Frederick. "The Road to Wang Yeh Fu." National city residents. There are nearly '30,000 photo­ Wulsins stayed in May 1923. Geographic Magazine (February 1926): 195-234. graphs in the Hedda Morrison Collection at Harvard-Yenching Library. OWEN LArriMORE SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Owen Lattimore ( 1900 -1989) was a self-educated Alonso, Mary Ellen, ed. China's Inner Asian Frontier: Photographs Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology scholar and political advisor to the U.S. Government of the Wulsin Expedition to Northwest China in 1923. Cambridge, 11 Divinity Avenue on Central Asian and Chinese affairs. He used his Mass: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 1979. photographs to complement his many research Cabot, Mabel H. Vanished Kingdoms: A Woman Explorer in Cambridge MA o~138 monographs and articles. Of the 2,545 images that Tibet, China, & Mongolia 1921-1925. New York: Aperture 617-496- 1 0~7 Lattimore deposited at the Peabody Museum (from Foundation in association with the Peabody Museum of 1914 and from 1924 to 1937), his photographs of Archaeology and Ethnology, 2003. www. peabody.ha1vard. edu Chinese Communist leaders and supporters, which he took during a four-day visit to Yon' an in June 1937, are perhaps the most famous. .