ABSTRACT
Photography studios possess many histories. Not only sites of production and agencies of visual articulation, they were units of cultural organization, consultancies for healthy living, and objects of social imagination. This chapter explores studios’ earliest discernible beginnings. It considers what can be known of studio numbers before turning to some of the conditions of studios’ establishment, both separate and mixed stories of international and inter-regional entrepreneurship. The enterprise behind studio foundations was international and inter-regional. Several of the earliest recorded photographic activities in Hong Kong, Guangzhou and other port cities were those of foreign visitors. The acculturation of photography studios to Chinese life happened in several combinations with high street commerce and also in the general perception of politics. The chapter analyzes the abundant evidence of studios’ emergence in commercial combinations with other industries and professions. Finally, it establishes what was distinctive in studios’ spatial design and their location in predominantly urban environments.
