From the perspective of cultural history, this article examines how Western photography of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries turned China into an object of the imperial gaze, and how the same images were later reinterpreted by Chinese intellectuals as a resource for internal critique. The object of the study consists of war photographs, images of public punishment, and selected illustrative materials related to late Qing China. These images were published in Leslie’s Weekly, The Illustrated London News, Le Petit Journal, as well as in photo albums and other printed publications of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The subject of the study is how these visual materials constructed a discourse of difference between “civilization” and “backwardness.” This discourse served to justify imperialist aggression and participated in the rewriting of the cultural memory of the colonized space. At the same time, these images were later used by Chinese revolutionaries as material for internal self-reflection. Through comparison of historical materials and textual analysis, the author shows how camera angle, frame composition, staging, and mechanisms of image circulation turned Chinese society into an object of visual control. Special attention is given to how the writer and thinker Lu Xun and other intellectuals of early Chinese modernity reread these photographs, moving them from the sphere of imperial spectacle into the space of national self-reflection. The novelty of the article lies in its treatment of photography not as a final statement about past events, but as visual material used to construct a discourse of difference, which could later be reassessed, reinterpreted, and transformed by other historical actors into a tool of intellectual enlightenment. The article argues that late Qing photography performed a dual historical function: it served as an instrument of visual domination and at the same time became a medium of critical self-observation. The article concludes that late Qing photography should be understood not only as a means of colonial representation of China, but also as one of the factors in the formation of modern Chinese subjectivity.
Liyu Xia (Fri,) studied this question.