Photo Poetics

What happened when photography met Chinese poetry? What kind of creative energy was released by this encounter, not only in these two specific fields but also in literary expression, visual culture, and aesthetic experience generally? Thought-provoking answers to these and related questions are found in this highly original, erudite, and thoroughly researched book. A remarkable piece of scholarship. -- Wu Hung, author of Zooming In: Histories of Photography in China
Photo Poetics presents an encyclopedic treatment of the development of Chinese photography as cultural history. Wu considers this new form of image-text as a cultural artifact and an “intermedial” work of art with close connections with classical Chinese painting and poetry. This book is a major achievement and a milestone in the study of photo poetics. -- Leo Ou-fan Lee, author of Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945
Photo Poetics is a magnificent pioneering work on the new technology of photography as it encountered indigenous Chinese visual and poetic aesthetics during the Republican era. Its sophisticated approach, comprehensive coverage, and interdisciplinary scholarship will strongly impact studies of comparative photography, intermedial and visual culture, and Chinese aesthetics. -- Grace Fong, author of Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China
Photo Poetics excitingly addresses hitherto-unnoticed tensions between modern media and premodern form in early Chinese art photography. Shengqing Wu expertly applies China studies paradigms while engaging with scholarship on Chinese poetry, painting, and modernity. -- Yomi Braester, author of Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract
There is an enormous amount to learn from Photo Poetics for anyone interested in restoring diversity to the study of Chinese culture from the first half of the twentieth century, for anyone needing to be persuaded that Chinese traditional culture did not perish after 1900, for anyone who enjoys exemplary cultural-historical research and, last but not least, for anyone who enjoys reading beautifully produced books with many wonderful images and with fascinating poems, printed in both their Chinese-language original and the author’s expert translation. This is a superb book. -- Michel Hockx * Twentieth-Century China *
[This book has] tremendous value in shaping our understanding of how photography was perceived and used by the Chinese literati class in the late Qing and early Republican era . . . the book will serve as a useful encyclopedia and touchstone, inspiring further research. -- Jiangtao Gu * Modern Chinese Literature and Culture *
Meticulously researched and beautifully produced, Photo Poetics: Chinese Lyricism and Media Culture is a valuable addition to the growing scholarship on photography in China. -- Yi Gu * Journal of Asian Studies *