John Charles Oswald’s photographs of China

By Special Collections, SOAS Library|23rd April 2018|Collections & Research|0 comments

Continuing our series on historical photographs of China, this week’s blog looks at John Oswald’s photographs of Foochow [Fuzhou]. His photographs document the home, work and social life of a British tea merchant living in a treaty port. John Charles Oswald (1857-1930) arrived in Foochow in the late 1880s, having worked for a tea importer in London for thirteen years. Initially working for Odell & Co. as a clerk, he

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New donation: Photographs of the Roberts Memorial Hospital, China

By Special Collections, SOAS Library|3rd April 2018|Collections & Research|4 comments

This week’s blog looks at a new donation of photograph albums received by SOAS Archives, offering a glimpse of life in a mission hospital in North China at the beginning of the 20th century, in the immediate aftermath of the Boxer Uprising[1].  The six captioned photograph albums (reference: MS 381326), dating from c.1902-1908, contain black & white prints and also cyanotypes with a blue image hue, which picture the ‘Roberts

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Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf

By Special Collections, SOAS Library|15th September 2016|Collections & Research|

In celebration of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage (which aims to raise awareness of the importance of audiovisual primary sources as an integral part of national identity) we are taking a look at the rich legacy of Professor Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf (1909-1995). Haimendorf was one of the foremost anthropologists of the 20th century, a pioneer in the field of visual anthropology and one of the most prolific ethnographers of tribal

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The Photographs of Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf

By Special Collections, SOAS Library|29th June 2014|Collections & Research|0 comments

As it is World Camera Day today, we thought it would be appropriate to take a look at the work of anthropologist, Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf. Born and educated in Vienna, Haimendorf studied anthropology and archaeology at the Theresianische Akademie at the University of Vienna before working for a few years in Vienna as a research assistant. He was awarded a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation that enabled him to study at

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