Discover China Through the Arts Pre-visit Lesson Plan for

Humanism in China: A Contemporary Record of Photography

Title: “Seeing the Camera In a Different Light”

Essential Question(s)

Does the camera as a technological tool change the way we see people in other cultures or change how we look at other people in society?

Learning objectives/goals/aims
1. Learn about the introduction of the camera to China and social reactions when it was first introduced.

2. Students analyze common characteristics of visual arts evident across time and among cultural/ethnic groups to formulate analyses, evaluations, and interpretations of meaning by making observations and inferences based on a pictorial magazine comic strip about the uses of pictorial technology.

Subject Area: Art; Social Studies Grade Level: 10 – 12 grades Time Required: 40 minutes Standards: National Arts Standards, Visual Arts: Understanding the Visual Arts in Relation to History and Cultures, K-4; 5-8; 9-12

Introduction

Today photographs are everywhere, and the technology to snap a photograph is readily available to almost everyone—probably many students in the classroom can use their cellphone or iphone to instantaneously send a photo to another student.  Our society is saturated by photographs and we have become so accustomed to viewing photographs that we need to self-consciously suspend our almost intuitive way of reading images to realize that photographic technology is a relatively recent invention that revolutionized the way people see the world and see themselves and others in the world.

A French painter, Louis-Jacques Mandé Daguerre, introduced the first practical method of photographically imprinting permanent images on silver-coated copper plates.  These so-called ‘daguerreotypes’ required an exposure time of up to half an hour in order to create a permanent image, thus limiting early photographic uses to such things as portraits. The equipment used to create daguerreotypes was also somewhat cumbersome making portability of cameras problematic. By the 1850s, however, technical improvements to photographic technology reduced exposure time to less than thirty seconds, which greatly improved the practicality of using this image technology.  Around the turn of the century, hand-held cameras lent themselves to being more widely used and increasingly by amateur photographers.

Photography was almost immediately introduced to China once it was invented, but was confined initially to treaty port cities like Macao and Canton where foreigners were permitted to live and trade.  Eventually, some entrepreneurial photographers set up commercial studios in growing urban areas like Shanghai and Beijing to cater to a growing market for photographic portraiture throughout the late 19^th century.  One other important use of photographic technology was to document international conflicts that erupted in China throughout the late 19^th century and into early 20^th century.  For example, a British photographer, Felice Beato, accompanied the Anglo-French forces during the Anglo-French North China expedition of 1860 which concluded the Second Opium War.  Beato photographed in an innovative fashion the corpses and devastation of battle scenes around the city of Beijing; these photographs were later collected and sold to soldiers in the campaign as well as to Western patrons and the photos were printed alongside accounts and memories of the campaign and newspaper reports.

As is evident, photographic technology was intimately related to Western presence in China (both cultural and military presence).  The same mix of grudging admiration for the West’s assertion of power and suspicion about its motives were wide-spread in early attitudes about how Chinese society was being presented to the world through Western eyes/camera lenses.  Lu Xun, the famous modernist writer from the early 20^th century, satirically captures the ambivalent mystique around photography in an essay, “On Photography,” from 1925 and notes an early impression he received from attitudes towards photography:

During my childhood…one often heard in S City men and women of all ages discussing how the foreign devils would pluck out people’s eyes.  There was once a woman who was servant in a foreign devil’s household. After leaving their employ, it came out that her reason for quitting was that she had herself seen a jar of pickled eyes piled like carp fry, layer upon layer, right up the edge of the jar.  She fled quickly and far to avoid this peril….Did the foreign devils actually eat these pickled eyes in place of pickled vegetables? Surely not, although I understand they did put them to several practical uses….[One of those uses was] for photography. Here the reason is clear enough, and there is no need to elaborate, for one has only to be face to face with someone and a little photograph of oneself is about to appear in their pupils.[1]

The confusion of how lenses might be “stolen glances” (actual stolen eyes!) fascinates Lu Xun and provides fodder for his satirical sensibility and occasioned a critical essay on how Chinese use and regard photography.

It is precisely this ambivalent attitude about the potential of photography as a considerably powerful but also disruptive technology that informs the comic strip used in this lesson.  The comic strip appeared in a 1908 edition of a news pictorial magazine—a new publication phenomenon like the American Life or Look magazines that heavily featured photojournalism and brought contemporary world events directly to the reader.  Against the backdrop of the camera as an apparatus associated with military incursions and infiltration of Western culture, the comic strip invites the reader to think critically of what a “magic lens” might reveal about a society in historical flux.

This cursory introduction to the early history of the introduction of photography to China and some social responses to it is designed to make students think critically about how cameras are used and how photographs are related to society.  Students who finish this lesson will be better prepared to appreciate their experience of visiting and viewing China Institute’s Fall 2009 exhibition, Humanism in China: A Contemporary Record of Photography.

Procedure/Pedagogical Technique/Instructional Strategy

1. Distribute document 1 [attached]: A “Magic Lens”: A Pictorial Cartoon from Early 20^th Century China. The teacher will provide a brief introduction outlined above to help historically contextualize when the cartoon was published as well as explain what a pictorial magazine was.

2. Divide the class up into four groups and assign them one frame of the cartoon per group. Explain to students that they are responsible for identifying the different social situations depicted and the various social positions of the persons depicted in the cartoon that they are reading. Once they have discussed what those relationships are, the class comes together and discusses what they think the message of the cartoon is about the introduction of a “magic lens” to society.

Discussion Points/Group Interaction

1. How would you characterize the overall tone of the cartoon?

2. How do you think the “magic lens” depicted in the cartoon is related to photography?

3. Think about contemporary technology and whether the class believes there is a social debate about how much others can “see into” our lives?  Do students feel technology can expose something meaningful about social relations not otherwise evident? If so, can they identify an example and debate whether this is a productive use of technology or a disruptive use?

Assessment

Have the students been able to indentify meaningful social critiques being made in the cartoon? Were they able to make a meaningful connection to social anxieties about the introduction of a new technology to existing social relations in early 20^th century China?  In their discussions, does it prepare them to read photographs with a critical eye to the social commentary of a photo rather than just its composition?

Closure

1. Students do a web search for photographs of early China (see instructional resources for suggested sites); have the students write a two page essay on both why the composition of the photograph makes it a memorable photograph and also what social relations are being depicted in the photograph and how is that evident in the photo.

2. Alternatively, students draw a new cartoon where they are the creators of a “magic lens”—what types of situations and people would they turn their lens on?  What do they anticipate they might discover?

Instructional Resources/Materials

1. Grace Lau, Picturing the Chinese: Early Western Photographs and Postcards of China (San Francisco, CA: Long River Press, 2008); a good reference book for understanding early history of photography in China.

2. Gilles Mora, Photospeak: A Guide to the Ideas, Movements, and Techniques of Photography, 1839 to the Present (New York: Abbeville Press, 1998).

3. Duke University Libraries’ collection of Stanley D. Gamble Photographs [http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/gamble/]; a useful collection of photographs taken during a renowned China scholar’s four separate trips to China between 1908 and 1932.

4. Historical photographs of China from Thomas H. Hahn’s Docu-Images [http://hahn.zenfolio.com/f240852810]; a useful collection of mostly early 20^th century photos of China.

Extending the Lesson/Follow-up Activity

1. Have students do a photo spread themselves where they identify a specific social place (e.g. public library entrance, homeless shelter, supermarket check-out counter) and then document interactions between different peoples.  They should keep a log detailing why they chose this particular place, how they expect the social interactions will unfold, and then present their photo documentation of what actually took place.  Did their documentary photo shoot conform to their expectations or did it reveal unexpected results?  What photos were most meaningful to them and why?

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[1] Lu Xun, “On Photography,” in Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893-1945 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996). Pp. 196-204.

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