Barbarian Lens: Western Photographers of the Qianlong Emperor's European Palaces (Documenting the Image Series) [Hardcover]

Regine Thiriez (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 9057005190 | ISBN-13: 978-9057005190 | Publication Date: October 1, 1998

Part of the prestigious academic book series Documenting the Image, this is a fascinating survey illustrated by extremely rare photographs of the burned architectural and landscape complex known as the Rape of the Summer Palace.
In 1860, Western armies brought ruin to the treasured seat of the Qing emperors near Beijing. One hundred and fifty images have been collected to date as a support for an extensive study of the building of the palaces and their subsequent destruction.
This book is a rigourous analysis of the work and experiences of the European photographers, both amateur and professional, working in Beijing during this period, and, as such, becomes an account of the development of photography itself. Offering a fascinating glimpse into 19th-Century China, the book gives an historical overview of the political situation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Fascinating....Apart from having accomplished the important task of assembling and analyzing these photographs, Thiriez has a fine eye for the telling detail....This book will be of great interest to virtually all those interested in nineteenth-century China, and in the colonial angle from which these photographs tell so many different stories, as well as those concerned with the history of photography itself.' - Joanna Waly-Cohen, New York University of Arts

'All historians of China now have a major debt to pay to Dr. Thiriez for her masterful study of the world of photography in nineteenth-century China. The book itself is especially fun for anyone who has ever done historical research. In fact, 'the historian as detective' is a major feature of the book, a subject all research historians understand and that few actually reveal in the writings ... Clearly this is a work which has many dimensions and one which a very large number of historians are likely to profit from. I recommend the book highly.' - Steven A. Leibo, Asia Book Review

'Regine Thiriez's level of scholarship is unmatched in this field ... An innovative and worthwhile book that will make significant advances in the study of late imperial China and the encounter between China and the rest of the world.' - John Finlay, Curator of Asian Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York

Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9057005190
• ISBN-13: 978-9057005190
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,470,385 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Groundbreaking new research on early photography in China., March 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Barbarian Lens: Western Photographers of the Qianlong Emperor's European Palaces (Documenting the Image Series) (Hardcover)

Régine Thiriez, an independent scholar who holds a Ph.D. in art history and is currently an associate research fellow in the East Asia Institute in Lyon (France), preparing an inventory of China photography, presents a substantial body of important new research on photography in China from the early years in the mid-19th century to 1860 as well as Qing dynasty China's reception of European technology. Her study, Barbarian Lens: Western Photographer's of the Qianlong Emperor's European Palaces, explores the Western involvement with the ruins of the European-style buildings constructed for the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736-1795) in his summer palace of the Yuanmingyuan, the "old" summer palace outside Beijing. The Yuanmingyuan was sacked and burned in 1860 by a French and British expeditionary force. Only the European part of the garden, constructed of brick and masonry, left substantial ruins. Standing mysteriously on the overgrown grounds of the half-abandoned site, the ruins exerted a powerful pull on European memories of the humiliation of the Emperor of China, and the shameful part played by Western armies in the destruction of the incomparable garden-palace and the treasures kept there. Such are the troubled feelings invoked by photographic images of the ruins. Placing the extant photographs in their historical context, Thiriez makes available to the interested reader and China specialist alike unprecedented primary research on the beginnings of photography in China, the identities and careers of the mostly little-known men who produced photographic images, and the complex relationships between photography and Western penetration of China. Barbarian Lens contains a wealth of scholarly information, presented in clear and succinct detail. Individual chapters focus on the practice of photography in Beijing (beginning in the early 1860s), the tragic encounter of China and Europe in the destruction of the Summer Palace, the amateur and professional photographers of the ruins, as well as the overlapping personal, political, and photographic ambitions of men in the Qing Imperial Maritime Customs, Western diplomatic missions, and other various undertakings. The volume is amply illustrated with more than 50 images-most of them previously unpublished-and includes extensive appendices on such subjects as the pioneering French Mission Palais d'Été studies of the European palaces. Perhaps the most impressive appendix is an exhaustive 24-page list of all the photographs of the European ruins identified by Thiriez to date. It tabulates photographers, photographic collections and sources, cataloguing information on the individual prints surveyed, the most likely date of the photo, additional reprints or rephotography of the same images (a very thorny problem in early photography), and the importance of the photo to the study of the place. It also cross-references the images, showing how they complement each other through the years. The appendices, notes, and bibliography supplement a richly rewarding text and generously make available the result of a decade of painstaking research in an almost unknown and unstudied field. In a volume that presents a complex, fascinating, and sometimes horrifying story of destruction and recovery, Régine Thiriez's contributions to the history of China photography and the fast-growing field of Qing dynasty historical studies are invaluable.