Books
Monday, 12 April 2010 05:04
Written by JFK Miller

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A new photobook chronicles Shanghai’s colorful past and present

The 1840s saw the coincidence of two events of historical importance – the opening of Shanghai as a treaty port and the invention of the camera. Ever since then the city’s development has been chronicled visually by a slew of photographers, the best of which now appear in a sumptuous new book, Shanghai: A History in Photographs 1842-Today, by celebrated photographer Liu Heung Shing and Chinese art historian Karen Smith.

 

“With the Expo in less than a month, Shanghai will attract the attention of the world and people will ask, ‘How did this city come about?’ So I hope this book will help explain that,” Liu told That’s Shanghai. “I want to take the readers with me on a journey of modern Shanghai.”

The starting point of the narrative is an engraving of the signing of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 by Chinese and British officials aboard the warship HMS Cornwallis. It is one of the few non-photographic images to appear in the book (the camera was invented the following year).

“I decided I had to have this engraving,” says Liu, who won the Pulitzer Prize for photography in 1992. “Under the ‘gunboat diplomacy,’ that’s how Shanghai opened to trade. I took that as the starting point of my narrative and took it all the way to the Expo.”

Liu says a book spanning the 19th, 20th and first decade of the 21st century – 170 years of Shanghai history – presents a remarkable portrait, but it was difficult to decide which photos to leave in and which to omit.

“As a photographer, the photos must first of all be aesthetically beautiful, but at the same time they must fit within the narrative of 170 years of Shanghai history,” says Hong Kong-born Liu. “My criteria were to look at the smallest details of daily life and to let these non-verbal images tell the story. For instance, the different body language at different times, the different facial expressions, the different activities, whether it’s work or leisure. How people looked and dressed, what their hairstyles were like, et cetera.”

 

Liu and Smith were commissioned to produce the book by the Expo’s Shanghai Corporate Pavilion. Having this official backing gave them unprecedented access to resources such as the Shanghai Archive, Shanghai Library, daily Shanghai newspapers and also many private collections and picture agencies around the world.

Liu and his team spent hundreds of hours carefully scanning and restoring scratchy old glass negative prints, some of which were so fragile they literally fell apart in Liu’s hands.

“The first page must look the same, consistent to our eyes, as the last page,” says Liu.

The co-authors also assigned 10 of the world’s top photographers to photograph contemporary Shanghai, such as Magnum photographer Chris Steele-Perkins, World Press Photo-winner James Nachtwey and up-and-coming Shanghainese photographer 28-year-old Kai Z. Feng, who shoots for British Vogue and Vanity Fair. Shanghai: A History in Photographs 1842-Today will be published by Penguin in hardback (RMB500) and paperback (RMB300) on April 13.

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