A history of Chinese photobooks

Society & Culture

The Chinese Photobook: From the 1900s to the Present, which was recently reprinted in a midsize edition, offers a historical tour of an educational and documentary medium. "Many of the titles were not originally conceived of as artistic expressions," Claire Voon writes, "but they present absorbing photographs and suggest how images have functioned over the years as a government tool."

Lucas Niewenhuis
Credit: Cover and interior selection from Chairman Mao is the Red Sun in Our Hearts (Beijing: People's Fine Arts Publishing House, 1967), from The Chinese Photobook (Aperture, 2016)

Lucas Niewenhuis is the Newsletter Editor at The China Project. Previously, he has researched China-Africa relations at the Social Science Research Council, interned at the Council on Foreign Relations, and studied Chinese language and culture in Shanghai and Beijing. Read more

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