Historical Chinese Postcard Project: 1896 - 1920
3.1.
Articles
Use of Nineteenth-Century Photographs in Early Postcards
Authors: Régine ThiriezDate: May 2004
Some types of postcards used only contemporary images: the views of the Western settlements, for example, were easy to date as there were constant changes. This was not always the case, as shown with the illustration of Chinese customs. There recent studio scenes were used together with much older products. It is clear that the early superb images of Chinese life shot in Shanghai in the late 1860s and 1870s made very fine postcards. They were, actually, more realistic, and certainly clearer descriptions of what was going on. However, they could also be obsolete. A public beheading with a background of Western houses [no. cn00158], a scene set up by Saunders before 1870, simply did not belong to the same world as the tall buildings lining the Shanghai Bund in 1900. This may have been clear to residents in China; it was certainly not elsewhere. Most people probably never understood the distinction, and saw China as more old-fashioned that it really was. (The fact that these old scenes [See Article Scenes of Chinese Life] were studio setups is still another matter.)