An extensive photographic collection of over 7,000 photographs, comprising the official photographic records of the China Inland Mission (later the Overseas Missionary Fellowship). Includes photographic depictions of notable CIM missionaries, mission workers, Christians of European and Chinese descent, in addition to photographs of government and political officials. Photographs of leading Chinese missionaries and envangelists such as Wang Mingdao [Ming Tao, Ming-Dao], John Sung, Marcus Cheng, Pastor Hsi, and Watchman Nee are also to be found within this collection. While a diverse range of subjects are documented throughout the collection, there are of note, a series of photographs collected from missionaries in the field concerning medical work and scenes of daily life across diverse ethnic groups in China, Taiwan, Thailand and Tibet.
The photographs in this collection number are from three different sources. The first is Frederick Howard Taylor, James Hudson Taylor's son, who collected particularly photographs associated with his father's early life in England, some of which he himself took in the early 1900's. The second source is the official records of the China Inland Mission/Overseas Missionary Fellowship. These include albums and loose photographs, often produced for special occasions, and a series of photographs collected from missionaries working in the field and arranged under subject headings. These include medical work and scenes of everyday life in China, Taiwan, Thailand and Tibet. The medical work is mostly concentrated in photographs 248-295. The third source is the records kept by A.J. Broomhall, the mission's historian, to facilitate and illustrate his research into the work of Taylor. These photographs are very varied, dating back to the 1860's, and include original photographs of the 'Lammermuir' party and also some of the missionaries who preceded it to China. There are many duplicates in this section, which is divided into two, general photographs and those selected for use in A.J. Broomhall's work, Hudson Tay for and China's Open Century.
The collection contains varying sized black and white prints (mostly silver gelatin). It also includes a smaller quantity of other visual formats such as postcards, illuminated addresses, glass plate negatives, albums and other oversized items.