From The Dagu Port To The Forbidden City-The Introduction Of Photography To Beijing

European and American scholars usually approach the history of photography in the 19 th century through the routes of the evolution of technology and the application of photography in different scenes,but I believe that such route of research cannot be applied to the study of the history of early Chinese photography because the objects and fields of study are very different.Compared to Europe and the United States,photography was not only an objectively foreign thing to China,but also a culturally foreign thing.At that time,China had no basis for advancing the development of technology and techniques,and was subject to a variety of internal and external restrictions because of its applications and values.Therefore,the study of the history of early Chinese photography can take a distinctive path that must take into account its own developmental conditions,combining the history of images,which used to focus on the examination of images,the history of photographic activities in East Asia as part of the history of Western photography,and the activities of local Chinese photographers and the history of photo studios,to study the process of the slow advancement and gradual creation of a network of photographic activities in the land of China.Specifically,this dissertation takes Beijing,a large city with a unique political and cultural environment,at the end of the Qing Dynasty as its object,and focuses on the introduction of photography to Beijing,and thus to the Qing imperial family,symbolized by the Forbidden City.The research is structured in two dimensions,horizontal and vertical: the horizontal is indexed by time,from the arrival of photography in Beijing in 1860 to the portrait of Empress Dowager Cixi in 1903;the vertical attempts to explore the process of photography as a foreign technology and culture,which was gradually accepted by different classes of Chinese people with different perceptions and feelings towards the West.The specific approach is to use historical images as a document and proceed from there,combining the history of the development of photographic technology and modern Chinese history,focusing on the photographic activities and technical exchanges between Chinese and foreign photographers in Beijing in the 19 th century,clarifying historical facts that have been misrepresented for years,and discussing what factors hindered or promoted its spread,in order to sort out the process of the introduction of photography to Beijing and show the acceptance and practice of photography as an idea.