Table of contents:
- 1. Li Hongzhang
- 2. Wealthy peasant woman
- 3. Merchant
- 4. Actors
- 5. Guangzhou
- 6. Wedding photography
- 7. Weaver
Video: A collection of rare photographs from China during the Qing dynasty
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
A huge collection of retro photos by Stefan Lowenteil, containing over 15,000 images. This archive is a unique opportunity to plunge headlong into the world of a distant Asian power, the history of which goes back several millennia. Antique dealer Stefan Lowentale has collected images of China from both Western and Chinese photographers for decades.
1. Li Hongzhang
2. Wealthy peasant woman
The photographs he found are not only of colossal historical value. For example, a photograph of American politician and human rights activist John Calhoun sold in 2011 set a new world record at Sotheby's. The lot price was 338 thousand dollars.
3. Merchant
Stefan's passion for digging in history can hardly be called accidental - he graduated with honors from college, received a bachelor's degree in history. In addition to photographs, Lowentale collects rare editions of books, opening even his own antique and second-hand bookstore at first. Now its regular customers are politicians of the highest level, professional collectors, representatives of the financial elites.
4. Actors
The photographs from the Lowentale archive show the everyday life of China; a state that did not yet know the boom of industrial modernization in the second half of the twentieth century and the root historical turning point that came in the 50s, when, together with the liberation from the inhuman Japanese occupation and the bloodless Chinese monarchy, China rushed into the communist present. This way of life was disrupted by European intervention, but architecture, clothing and transport look familiar and unfamiliar to a modern person at the same time. These pictures are ready to act as silent witnesses of the era. Many photographs convey to us images of monuments that have already ceased to exist, such as the "portrait" of the Old Summer Imperial Palace by Felice Beato, irretrievably destroyed during the Opium Wars.
5. Guangzhou
Portraits preserve photographs of people posing for photographers both in work and festive, national clothes. Photos of everyday life show not the figures frozen for centuries, but the ebullient city life, where each hero is busy with his own business.
6. Wedding photography
The collection brings together both the works of visiting European photographers: the Italian Felice Beato, the British Thomas Child and William Saunders, the Scotsman John Thompson, but also local Chinese photographers such as Pun Lun, Lai Athos, Tung Hing and others. The archive's extensive array of photographs allows exhibiting photographs in several of the world's leading museums at the same time.
7. Weaver
Unique photographs have been exhibited at The Mishkin Gallery, Australia, Baruch College in the USA, China Exchange in Britain and China's Tsinghua University. Su Deng, deputy director of the museum, described the exhibition as "a must see for all scholars interested in literature, history, folklore and architecture … a grand celebration of historical culture and artistic aesthetics."
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