Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art 2014 Chinese Visual Art

Exhibition dates: seventh Feb – 14th June 2020

The Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY has temporarily closed until further notice due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

#MuseumFromHome

Lai Fong (Chinese, c. 1839-1890)
[Actors]
1870s
Albumen impress
Collection of Stephan Loewentheil, Cornell JD 1975

Such a rare commodity (and I apply the word deliberately) – an Indigenous photographer – in a earth educated "in the colonial view of photography's history that has privileged Western travel photographers." And yet, Lai Fong buys into the photographic conventions of the solar day, based on Western ethics of ethnographic portraiture and documentary landscape photography, to sell his impressive product range. In a photograph such as [Grouping portrait virtually Fangguangyan Monastery, Fujian] (c. 1869, below) the positioning of the European figures could have come straight out of an Édouard Manet painting, complete with their air of posed insouciance. Fifty-fifty in the photo of a brothel, a Canton boat which served only wealthy Chinese clients [Flower boat, Guangzhou] (1870s, beneath), the Due west encroaches, equally can be seen by the funnels and sails of a ship that lurks behind the traditional floating pleasure den.

Simply rarely exercise we glimpse Lai Fong's individuality as an creative person… the low camera position, long vanishing point and panoramic landscape of the ii magnificent images [Ming Tombs, Beijing](1879, beneath); or the sublime construction of the image in photographs such as [Piled Stone Peaks in Mount Wuyi] (c. 1869, below) with its reference to Chinese castor-and-ink landscape painting known every bit Shan shui.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to the Johnson Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Installation images of the exhibition Lai Fong (ca. 1839-1890): Photographer of China at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University
Credit: David O. Dark-brown, Johnson Museum

This exhibition introduces viewers to the work of Lai Fong, arguably the most aggressive and successful photographer of nineteenth-century China. He began practicing under the proper noun Afong in Hong Kong in the 1860s, and over the next twenty years congenital a towering reputation on his illustrious clientele, his impressive product range, and a catalogue of views of China "larger, choicer, and more complete… than any other in the Empire," according to his advertisements. His photographs of Chinese cities, monuments, people, and state – however shaped by the desires of his cosmopolitan clientele – stand as records of places that have changed often beyond recognition, and of his ain artistry, exuberance, and entrepreneurial brilliance. Managed by his son and daughter-in-law afterward his death, his studio persisted into the 1940s, an case of remarkable longevity in a famously difficult field.

"Despite the historical fame of Lai's studio and the reach of his photographs, which be today in collections worldwide, Lai remains little known outside of specialist circles," said Kate Addleman-Frankel, the Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography at the Johnson Museum. "His piece of work is understudied and rarely exhibited, the result in function of a colonial view of photography's history that has privileged Western travel photographers over indigenous practitioners. Lai Fong: Photographer of China is not but the kickoff exhibition dedicated to Lai, merely to any Chinese lensman working in the initial decades of photography's global proliferation."

The exhibition brings together near fifty images, many of which take never been previously published or exhibited, suggesting them as allegorical of one of the nineteenth century'south most significant, and significantly overlooked, photographic careers. They are fatigued primarily from the singular drove of Stephan Loewentheil, JD '75, who over 3 decades has assembled one of the world's foremost collections of early on photographs of China. Other lenders to the exhibition include the Cornell Library's Partitioning of Rare and Manuscript Collections, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Getty Research Institute.

Of special note is the Ming Tombs anthology from Cornell Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. This album of ninety-five photographs of Beijing has been in the collection of the Cornell Library since 1940. In 2019, the photographs were attributed to Lai past Kate Addleman-Frankel, the Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography at the Johnson, as part of ongoing research on the academy's collections of Asian photographs. The album is a remarkable compendium, the most complete collection of Lai'south images of the Chinese capital withal discovered. At least 19 of them may have been entirely unknown previously; they do non appear in the only catalogue of Lai'southward photographs reconstructed to engagement, past the historian Terry Bennett.

This exhibition was curated by Kate Addleman-Frankel, the Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography at the Johnson, and Stacey Lambrow, curator of the Loewentheil Photography of China Collection, with the help of Yuhua Ding, curatorial banana for Asian fine art at the Johnson. It is supported in function by the Helen and Robert J. Appel Exhibition Endowment.

Printing release from the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art

Lai Fong (Chinese, c. 1839-1890)
[Afoot hairdresser]
1870s
Albumen print
Collection of Stephan Loewentheil, Cornell JD 1975

Genre images like these, along with views of monuments, cities, and natural scenery, were cardinal to the Chinese photography market. Lai created them both at home and on expedition, setting upwards makeshift studios where necessary. The photographs characteristic people who may or may non have really inhabited the traditional roles they play for the camera: Lai had a talent for summoning natural postures and expressions from subjects he had costumed and bundled.

Lai'southward photographs certainly appealed to Chinese buyers but, like most nineteenth-century photographs of China, they were largely produced for consign. They left Hong Kong every bit souvenirs with the international officials, merchants, missionaries, and tourists who began to enter Chinese cities in nifty numbers in the 1860s, afterward successive incursions by the British military forced the Qing dynasty to expand foreigners' admission to the country.

Lai Fong (Chinese, c. 1839-1890)
[Flower boat, Guangzhou]
1870s
Albumen impress
Collection of Stephan Loewentheil, Cornell JD 1975

For hundreds of years, floating brothels existed on the Pearl River Delta, part of a river scene that grew alongside maritime trade between China and Europe in the eighteenth century. The boats in most harbours were open to men from any nation, but the Canton boats served but Chinese clients, primarily the wealthy elite. Called flower boats, they were places of lavish entertainment. They could exist exquisitely constructed and outfitted, and were oft romantically depicted in gift paintings.

Despite the boats' glamorous reputation, the manufacture turned on slavery. The women and girls working aboard were the property of the boats' owners, purchased as children and trained in appealing to men of high order. When age or disease rendered them no longer lucrative, they were sold or discarded. Such cruelty was increasingly reviled as the century wore on. The last boats disappeared in the 1930s.

Lai Fong (Chinese, c. 1839-1890)
[Beijing]
1879
Albumen print
Sectionalization of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell Academy Library

Lai Fong (Chinese, c. 1839-1890)
[Ming Tombs, Beijing]
1879
From an anthology of albumen prints
Cornell Academy Library, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections

Lai Fong (Chinese, c. 1839-1890)
[Ming Tombs, Beijing]
1879
From an album of albumen prints
Cornell University Library, Sectionalisation of Rare and Manuscript Collections

This anthology of ninety-v photographs of Beijing has been in the drove of the Cornell Library since 1940. In 2019, the photographs were attributed to Lai past Kate Addleman-Frankel, the Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography at the Johnson Museum, every bit part of ongoing enquiry on the university'southward collections of Asian photographs. The album is a remarkable compendium, the nigh complete collection of Lai's images of the Chinese upper-case letter yet discovered. At to the lowest degree nineteen of them may accept been entirely unknown previously; they do not appear in the simply catalogue of Lai'due south photographs reconstructed to engagement, by the historian Terry Bennett.

Lai traveled to what was so Peking in 1879, possibly on the invitation of the foreign diplomats whose portraits are included in the album. Alongside these portraits are views of the monuments of the ancient urban center, including temples, pagodas, the observatory, the Summer Palace, and the Ming Tombs. As here, many of these monuments are pictured from a distance. Lai makes the approach to the subject as primal to the picture as the bailiwick itself.

Lai Fong (Chinese, c. 1839-1890)
Role of the Bund, Shanghai
1870s
From an anthology of albumen prints
Getty Research Institute, Clark Worswick collection of photographs of Mainland china and Southeast Asia

Lai Fong (Chinese, c. 1839-1890)
Part of the Bund, Shanghai
1870s
From an album of albumen prints
Getty Research Plant, Clark Worswick collection of photographs of China and Southeast Asia

Contrary to accounts first propagated by its early on European and American inhabitants, Shanghai had not been an inconsequential place – a "angling village on a mudflat," as one famous city guide put it – before it was opened to strange settlement and trade by the 1842 Treaty of Nanking. In fact, for centuries it had been an important signal along trade routes between Communist china and Southeast Asia, and past the 1830s it had a quarter of a million inhabitants. Notwithstanding, its growth after 1842 was explosive. By the commencement of the new century its physical size had more than doubled, its population quadrupled, and it had become a global commercial capital.

The landmarks of the early decades of this era – the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking company, the Shanghai Guild, many of the important mercantile hongs, or trading houses – were clustered along the Shanghai Bund. This waterfront embankment district reached the International Settlement at one end and the French Concession at the other.

Lai Fong (Chinese, c. 1839-1890)
[Grouping portrait about Fangguangyan Monastery, Fujian]
c. 1869
Albumen impress
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Drove
Purchase, Robert Rosenkranz Gift, 2005

Around 1869, Lai was invited by foreign residents of Fuzhou to record a private excursion by boat to the Fangguangyan Monastery, a "hanging temple" known for its spectacular location and pattern. Lai posed the group for photographs at several spots along the route.

The rather illustrious expedition political party included Charles Sinclair, the British Consult of Fuzhou, who sits on the stool at left; Sinclair's wife, who leans confronting the rock wall; Baron de Méritens, an Imperial Maritime Customs Service commissioner, who perches on a rock at center; Prosper Giquel, Director of the Fuzhou Arsenal, who stands past Sinclair's wife; and Francis Temple, an accountant at the Shanghai branch of the Oriental Banking company, who is stretched out informally in the foreground. The homo adopting a like pose in the groundwork remains unidentified.

Lai Fong (Chinese, c. 1839-1890)
[Piled Stone Peaks in Mount Wuyi]
c. 1869
Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, Gilman Collection
Purchase, Robert Rosenkranz Gift, 2005

Shan shui was a traditional form of Chinese brush-and-ink landscape painting that followed a circuitous fix of compositional and conceptual rules. Lai refers to it in his images of magnificent natural forms, but photography grounded his representations in the observed, external world – a key divergence from the idealism of shan shui pictures.

In his picture of Mount Wuyi, Lai monumentalises the Danxia landform that characterises the mountain, located in the southern suburb of Wuyishan, Fujian. Danxia contain isolated hills and steep layered rocks of cherry sandstone that accept been shaped by eons of weathering and fluvial erosion. Lai was among the first Chinese photographers to photo Mount Wuyi's marvellous stone peaks.

Lai Fong (Chinese, 1839-1890)
Bridal Carriage
1870s
Albumen argent impress from glass negative
Courtesy of the Loewentheil Collection

Lai Fong (Chinese, 1839-1890)
Chinese Junks, Hong Kong
1870s
Albumen silver print from drinking glass negative
Courtesy of the Loewentheil Collection

Lai Fong (Chinese, 1839-1890)
Dragon Boat Race, Guangzhou
1870s
Albumen silver print from drinking glass negative
Courtesy of the Loewentheil Collection

Lai Fong (Chinese, 1839-1890)
Waterfall in the Dinghu Mountains
1870s
Albumen silver print from drinking glass negative
Courtesy of the Loewentheil Collection

Lai Fong (Chinese, 1839-1890)
Portrait of an Official
1870s
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Courtesy of the Loewentheil Collection

Attributed to Lai Fong (Chinese, 1839-1890)
Culling Tea
c. 1869
Albumen silver print from glass negative
six fifteen/16 × 9 three/8 in. (17.6 × 23.8cm)
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Robert Rosenkranz Gift, 2005
CC0 ane.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain

Lai Fong (Chinese, 1839-1890)
Portrait of a Merchant
c. 1870
Albumen print
29 cm x 22cm
Loewentheil Photography of Prc Collection

Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
114 Central Avenue, Ithaca, NY 14853

Opening hours:
Monday: Closed
Tuesday – Wednesday: 10am – 5pm
Thursday: 10am – vii.30pm
Friday – Sunday: 10am – 5pm

Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art website

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Source: https://artblart.com/2020/04/26/exhibition-lai-fong-ca-1839-1890-photographer-of-china/

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