An acclaimed international authority on the subject, the author has been collecting and researching nineteenth century Chinese, Japanese and Koran photography for over twenty-five years. He has lectured in Britain, France, Switzerland, Canada, the United States, Japan, Hong Kong and Shanghai. His previous books include Caught in Time: Great Photographic Archives, Japan(1995, with Sir Hugh Cortazzi), Early Japanese Images(1996), Korea: Caught in Time(1997), Japan and the Illustrated London News 1853-1899(2006), Photography in Japan 1853-1912(2006), and , published by Quaritch in 2006, Old Japanese Photographs: Collectors’ Data Guide.

The first comprehensive history of the earliest years of photography in China, combining previously unpublished research with over 150 photographs, many of which are attributed and published here for the first time.

Terry Bennett describes the way in which the discovery of photography in China was framed against the tumultuous backdrop of the Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion and the opening of numerous treaty ports to foreign trade. From 1842, when the use of a camera was first recorded in China, foreign and Chinese photographers captured the people, places and events of this unsettled period. They were professional portraitists, soldiers and pioneering amateurs, among them: Jules Itier; Pierre Rossier; Lo Yuanyou (the earliest-recorded Chinese commercial photographer); Felix Beato; and Milton Miller. The author, an acclaimed international authority on historical photographs from China, Japan and Korea, sheds new light on the unique historical value of these photographs.

The images are drawn from institutional and private collections from all over the world. The text includes extensive documentary notes, valuable listings of early stereoviews of China and biographies of more than forty photographers working in China up to 1860. It also introduces important new detail on the life of Felix Beato.