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Abstract
This paper looks at visual encounters between west and east, in the context of the north-eastern province of China, specifically Weihaiwei and Qufu, in the early years of the twentieth century. It focuses on the British Commissioner for Weihaiwei, James Haldane Stewart Lockhart, and his subordinate, Reginald Johnston, and their relations with key figures, the Governors of Shandong and Duke Kong. This relationship is approached through the formal photographs, taken by a Chinese photographer, here partially identified as ‘Ah Fong’. These successful photographs are compared with a later, commissioned plan to photograph the whole British Empire, undertaken by Alfred Hugh Fisher.
Notes
1 – David Fraser, ‘Wei-Hai-Wei. Shall We Keep It?’, Times of India (16 February 1905).
This article was generated from the collection of photographs taken and assembled by Sir James Haldane Stewart Lockhart, who worked as an official administrator in Hong Kong and Weihaiwei in China from 1879 to 1921. This collection was given to George Watson's College in Edinburgh after Stewart Lockhart's death, and the Trustees have now put the collection on long-term loan to the Scottish National Photography Collection in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. There is a wide range of photographers, subjects and images in the collection, and the ones considered here are chosen for a perceptibly eccentric character, led by the actors, Sir James Haldane Stewart Lockhart, Duke Kong, Ah Fong, Reginald Johnston, A. H. Fisher and the old man in the winter hat. The collection was first curated and managed by Michael Gill, later supported by Shiona Airlie. This article has been entirely dependent on the generosity of knowledgeable colleagues throughout the world, most especially Shiona Airlie, who is an expert on Sir James Haldane Stewart Lockhart and on his successor Reginald Johnston. See Airlie's publications: Shiona Airlie, Thistle and Bamboo: The Life and Times of Sir James Stewart Lockhart, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989; and Shiona Airlie, Reginald Johnston, Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland 2001. My knowledge is also supported by the Chinese publication: Zhang Jianguo and Zhang Junyong, Weihaiwei Under British Rule, trans. Alec Hill, Shandong 2006. Zhang Jianguo, Weihaiwei, Edwin Lai, Hong Kong, Hsueh-Man Shen, National Museums of Scotland, James Simpson, Michael and Barbara Gray have all kindly communicated with me on details of the biographies and photography discussed.
2 – ‘J. T. [John Thomson]’, ‘Hong Kong Photographers’, British Journal of Photography, 19 (1872), 569.
3 – Ibid.
4 – Airlie, Life and Times, 111.
5 – Ibid., 106.
6 – Illustrated in Mary Warner Marien, Photography: A Cultural History, Laurence King Publishing 2006, 123.
7 – Airlie, Life and Times, 123. As a cadet in Hong Kong, Lockhart had worked with a particularly impressive Chinese tutor, Ouyang Hui.
8 – Reginald Johnston, Account of a Journey in Shantung from Weihaiwei to the Tomb of Confucius, Port Edward, Weihaiwei 1904, 3.
9 – Ibid., 1.
10 – Ibid., 16.
11 – Some of the large glass negatives have been numbered in a manner similar to the ones on the previous expedition, which would assist in the argument that this was the same photographer. There is no internal evidence in the album of the photographer's identity. However, a photographer using an equivalent large-scale plate camera worked for Lockhart in Weihaiwei, photographing the visit of the Governor of Shandong in 1905. The Lockhart Archive contains a number of these glass negatives, which include pictures of objects from Lockhart's collection. In the background of a negative of a scroll painting is a painted studio backdrop. The painting style of this is derived from a western model of generalised decorative character. The only photograph in the Lockhart collection to show a backdrop of this kind is dated 1920 and is in a printed folder produced by ‘Afong Studio Shanghai and Weihaiwei’. The Afong studio camera is in the collection of the Museum of Rongcheng Folk Customs at Chishan.
12 – Johnston, Account of a Journey, 3.
13 – On the evidence of a paper bag containing photographs belonging to Miss Jessie Stewart, whose British father and Chinese mother lived in Weihaiwei in the 1930s. Kindly communicated by Zhang Jianguo. The photographer and the studio seem also to have left Weihaiwei with the end of the British lease.
16 – John Thomson, Through China with a Camera, London and New York 1899, 8.
14 – In an album of photographs by Afong Lai, taken around Foochow about 1870, Scottish National Photography Collection gift of Mrs Ann Riddell in memory of Peter Fletcher Riddell, PGPR 871.1.
15 – See Régine Thierrez, Oxford Companion to Photography, 2005.
17 – The distinction between Johnston's enthusiastic account of the experience and the report of another government official may be seen in Report by Mr W. J. Garnett of a Journey through the Provinces of Shantung and Kiangsu. Presented to the Houses of Parliament … June 1907, London 1907, 3, in which the account of Qufu begins, ‘Chufou is a small town with little or no trade, and the shops are poor’.
18 – Thomson, Through China with a Camera, 19.
19 – As elementary evidence of Ah Fong's appreciation of the importance of his photographs, in this case the large negatives which Stewart Lockhart owned and had commissioned were copies from the originals, which presumably Ah Fong held onto.
20 – Reginald Johnston, Confucianism and Modern China, London: Gollancz 1934.
21 – Johnston, Account of a Journey, 22.
22 – The papers and photographs referred to here are in Royal Commonwealth Society Library at Cambridge University Library, Ref. GBR/0115/Fisher. My knowledge of this collection comes substantially from their website.
23 – Fisher photograph collection, Royal Commonwealth Society Library, Cambridge University Library, janus.lib.cam.ac.uk
24 – Some or all of the ‘Afong’ photographs acquired by Fisher in 1908 may date back to 1904.