Historical Photographs of China

Historical Photographs of China makes freely available over 18,000 photographs of modern China to support teaching, learning and research.

The project aims to locate, digitise, archive, and disseminate online photographs from the substantial holdings of images of modern China held mostly in private hands outside of China itself. The photographs presented cover over a century of modern China's history, and capture a very wide range of places, communities and themes. They are often of even greater historic interest than might ordinarily be the case, as the destruction of materials in China through war and revolution in the twentieth century, and especially during the 1966-69 Cultural Revolution, means that there is a relative dearth today of accessible photographic records. Images from both private and public collections have been digitised, but mostly the site makes available photographs of China taken by private individuals, and the greater part have never been shown outside family circles before.

Users can browse the images by collection or photographer; search for specific photographs; view images online; and download the digitised originals for educational or personal use.

This is a description of an Online Resource. Online Resources are websites that describe, interpret and provide access to archives. They often provide access to digital content but they may also describe physical materials. They usually cover a theme or topic, such as an individual, a movement, or an important historical event.

Access this resource online: https://www.hpcbristol.net/.

The images are made available with the agreement of their owners to support teaching, learning and research. Under a Creative Commons licence, low resolution jpegs can be freely downloaded from the site and used, for example, in a classroom or home. The licence stipulates that you acknowledge the provenance of images and identify them appropriately. High resolution images for publication on paper can be requested from the project team.

Historical Photographs of China is likely to be of interest to researchers studying Chinese history and culture from a variety of different disciplines and subject areas, since the photographs presented cover a very wide range of locations, communities and subjects.

There are detailed introductions to the larger collections on dedicated pages, and concise information about others. The project team have added the information that came with each collection and additional metadata to the photographs to facilitate searching.

Users can browse by collection, location and photographer, and can search by keyword and date, as well as searching specific metadata fields.

There is more information about the project and many of the images on the project blog, Visualising China.