From the 1980s, after the introduction of Deng Xiaoping’s ‘open-door policy’, Chinese artists began exploring the possibilities of photography as a vehicle for self-expression and artistic experimentation. Their access to new and improved digital technologies, as well as to the Internet, enabled them to respond creatively and with immediacy to the transformative effects of China’s rapid economic growth; and to download and disseminate their photographs across the world, capturing the attention of Western art museums, curators, and collectors.

Since 2000 countless international exhibitions have focused on Chinese photography. These include A Strange Heaven: Contemporary Chinese Photography (2003), Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video Art from China (2004), and Zooming into Focus (2003–05). In Australia, the Queensland Art Gallery’s Asia-Pacific Triennial has regularly featured contemporary Chinese photography. Chinese photographers as well as other artists who routinely employ photography in their works, including Ai Weiwei, Song Dong, Wang Qingsong, and Yang Fudong, have become renowned internationally, and their works have been acquired by numerous public institutions and private collectors. In China, local galleries, collectors, and auction houses have also been promoting works by these and other Chinese photographers, and since the mid-1990s there has been a proliferation of art magazines, online databases, and blogs devoted to photography; and the Pingyao Photography Festival, held annually in Shanxi Province, has become a fixture on the international art calendar.

Notwithstanding the increased visibility and demand for Chinese photography internationally, surprisingly few scholarly texts exist on this subject in the English language. Exhibition catalogues, art periodicals, and books published on Chinese photography typically focus on a particular theme, artist(s), or period and rarely examine its development in a sustained or comprehensive manner.

Photography and China is one of the first systematic attempts to critically examine the changing role and significance of photography in China from the nineteenth century to the present day. It is part of a growing list of publications on photography by Reaktion books. Its author, Claire Roberts, is an art historian and curator who lived in China in the 1980s, and completed a doctorate and book on the literati painter Huang Binhong (1865–1955). This new book evidences her in-depth knowledge and experience of China and Chinese art. It is the culmination of several years of archival research in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and China, where access to historical records is challenging, particularly since relatively few survived China’s Cultural Revolution.

Photography and China is essentially an historical overview of photography in China from 1840 to 2011, and it is as much about China’s history as it is about photography. Roberts’s objective is ‘to explore the introduction of photography to China, how the medium was understood in technological and cultural terms, and how it has been applied’. Chronologically structured, key themes include the impact of foreign involvement in China, war and propaganda, and the rise of individualism and artistic experimentation.The Republican era (1912–49) and the tumultuous years surrounding the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) are given the most attention, with developments post-1990 assigned one chapter. Given the wealth of material written about contemporary Chinese photography from the 1990s to the present, Roberts’s decision to focus on developments prior to and during the twentieth century is not necessarily a drawback.

Portraiture has been central to photography in China and is a recurring theme in this book. Roberts traces its development from the imperial court, where photographic portraits played an important diplomatic and ceremonial role, to the rise of industrialisation and modernisation and a burgeoning media industry. The author’s account of the proliferation of commercial photographic studios in Shanghai and Hong Kong during the Republican era is fascinating, and is explored in relation to the growth of newspapers and illustrated magazines, the leisure and entertainment industries, and the absorption of Western trends, such as wedding photography. Roberts demonstrates how photography, invented in the West, has been re-adapted to suit local customs and conditions in China, thus developing its own distinctive genre of ‘Chinese photography’.

Adopting an all-encompassing view of China, the author ambitiously sets out to explore photographic developments on the mainland as well as in Hong Kong and Taiwan (a categorisation that is problematic for some artists who resist being incorporated into this Chinese cultural rubric). While such an aim is commendable, the constraints of space (176 pages of text less than A4 in size, plus images) make this an unrealistic goal. Indeed, the fact that a total of four individual photographers from both Hong Kong and Taiwan are examined with less than a short paragraph allocated to each artist could be viewed as tokenistic. The principal focus of this book is photography on mainland China and its interactions with the West explored in a broad socio-political and cultural context.

Nonetheless, a great strength of this book is its recognition of photography as a transnational medium explored in China not in isolation but as a dynamic process of cross-cultural encounter and exchange. The developmental influences of key Western photographers in China are examined. These include Felice A. Beato (1834–1906), who was with the British forces and visually documented the ravages of war in China; and the well-known Scotsman, John Thomson (1837–1921), who travelled extensively in China photographing, with great sensitivity, the daily lives of Chinese.

Photography and China is a well-researched publication that is informative, engaging, and accessible to a wide audience. As the author notes, the book is a ‘story of East-West exchange’ offering a valuable insight into the ways that locals as well as foreigners have used the camera’s lens to view and document China’s rise.