Dec 13, 2010

Early Postcards in East Asia and Indo-China

| Dec 13, 2010 | 0 nhận xét

Early postcards can be defined as a means of communication, a collector's item, or a 1900s fad. They were also, however, a new and effective means of spreading images of distant countries. They reached a broader audience than illustrated journals, exerting an influence comparable only with that of television much later. They appeared at a time significant for three neighbouring but culturally distinct eastern Asiatic areas: Indo-China, China, and Japan. The 1900 Boxer Rebellion in China unleashed the flood, hastening the proliferation of postcards of and in the area by providing both sustained interest abroad and a local market of foreign soldiers writing home.


Soon after photographic cards appeared c. 1896, the market became global: pre-1900 postcards of China can be traced to publishers in Japan, Germany, France, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. Postcards were published everywhere, and sold everywhere. Markets were nevertheless distinct: for example, France and Britain would not always produce or buy the same images, and this diversity of provenance is reflected in surviving collections today. Still, because many postcards are unidentified, uncredited, and undated, we actually have no global conception of exactly what was produced, where, when, or, often, by whom. But it is clear that, even in the countries depicted (e.g. China or Japan), early postcards were for Western consumption. Also, the areas most frequented, or historically or politically most important, were the most widely photographed.

In contrast with photography generally, which was gradually moving towards a modern style, early postcards were a direct offshoot of 19th-century commercial photography, and although it sometimes treated standard subjects in new ways, postcard iconography generally stuck to well-established conventions. Often too, the photographs used for postcards, especially of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and, to a lesser degree, Japan, go back a surprisingly long way: while views of modern architecture were usually contemporary with the postcards, i.e. turn-of-the-century or later, genre scenes and portraits might be 30-40 years old. This was never indicated at the time, as photographic prints and postcards are normally undated (photographers probably tended deliberately to avoid showing datable features) and users doubtless believed they were ‘current’ images.

While Japan's and Indo-China's identities are clearly defined in postcards, China's is more blurred. The transition from empire to republic, and various foreign influences, impinged on images of the country. Yet postcards of China were unusually innovative compared with 19th-century photographs. Because, from 1900, foreigners were allowed to travel freely inland, the geographical scope of early cards rapidly extended beyond the treaty ports; in some cases, they were the earliest photographic images of a place. The ‘typical scene’ persisted, but also expanded to cover outdoor (non-studio) versions, or subjects that had been either inaccessible to non-portable cameras (village life, fairs, or candid street scenes) or effectively non-existent (Chinese army exercises, or the new development of territories leased to foreign powers). Postcards also covered current events, often disasters: the 1911 Revolution, for example, was shown as very bloody. And a new genre of missionary subjects appeared, useful for propaganda and fund-raising.

Japan was shown as possessing a dual identity: new were the trappings of modernity, a country with a developing industrial-age infrastructure, well on its way to becoming a major power. Old was the quaint Japan the West had fallen in love with decades earlier. Together, they yielded the image of a dynamic society, confident of its traditions without being held back by them.

Most of Indo-China was a French colony, where postcards followed the conventions of earlier photography—most of which was not very old in any case, especially for Laos. The market was dominated by the Hanoi publisher and photographer Pierre Dieulefils to such an extent that a superficial glance would reveal a single style of images, with views of Tonkin very much in the majority.

Everywhere, publishers recycled studio portraits into ‘typical’ images (e.g. ‘A Shanghai woman’), obscuring the question of who and what people really were. New stereotypes emerged, including, predictably, the archetypal postcard subject of pretty girls. The Japanese variant was the modest kimono-clad young woman described by all contemporary writers or, more rarely, the bare-breasted girl at her toilet popularized by Felice Beato in the 1860s. Indo-China's was a country girl at work, also sometimes shown in bare-breasted innocence. This was innocuous enough, if simplistic. However, possibly because ordinary Chinese women were modestly attired and respectable looking, the Chinese version was based mostly on stock portraits of courtesans and other prostitutes from Shanghai and Tianjin. All three postcard-created female stereotypes were long lasting.

Captioning is a source of astonishment or frustration, both in spelling—the rendition of English on Japanese cards is fascinating—and for its identification of views or other subjects. It is clear that images of everywhere were produced everywhere, and, sometimes, anyhow. Some errors were deliberate and meant to boost sales, but many were not. Absurdities abound, like the location of the Great Wall of China in Hong Kong, or the caption ‘Japanese Women Eating Makaroni [sic]’.

The postcard was also an effective political instrument. Its capacity to transmit colonial viewpoints was demonstrated by the French in Indo-China, and by the Japanese in Korea and Taiwan. German publishers carefully recorded all aspects of the transformation of Qingdao (Tsingtao in Shandong) into a model colony. In cases of territorial dispute, for example Manchuria before and after the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), successive postcard issues showed the original owner ostentatiously in possession, then the new one installed with all the obligatory imperial symbolism of flags, soldiers, and warships.

Source: answers



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