ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses photography’s multifaceted role as the prominent visual medium toward which intellectuals, visual artists, politicians, and literary figures gravitated at a time of national crisis and political turmoil in Republican China (1912–1949). Many Fourth intellectuals and artists such as Lu Xun and Liu Bannong published thought-provoking reflections on photography that address issues of modernity, cultural identity, ethnicity, and the very function of images within a changing society. The chapter reveals the alterity or otherness of Chinese photography criticism and theory, which in turn serves to interrogate Eurocentric assumptions about photography theory, China, and the photographic medium itself. Lu Xun’s and Liu Bannong’s fascinating writings help to counter the Eurocentric tendencies of recent histories of photography criticism and theory, and they shed light on unique sites of appropriation and contestation that expand the purview of and lay the foundation for a global history of photography criticism and theory.
