妖术/技术/美术:20世纪20年代中国现代摄影的历史语境

From the Black Art, Western Technique to Modern Art: The Historical Context of Chinese Modern Photography in the 1920s

19世纪中叶,摄影术随西方殖民者、商人及摄影师传入中国。19世纪下半叶,作为西方文化及民主政治变化的表征,摄影逐渐进入中国人的生活。20世纪初的清末新政期间,清政府将摄影的重要性提升到可用于实业救国的西方先进科技之一。到20世纪20年代,随着文学艺术界一系列革命口号和历史事件的展开,摄影在中国最终成为现代艺术之一种。本文通过对中国早期摄影从19世纪40年代到20世纪20年代历史语境的考察,展现了中国早期现代摄影经历从妖术、技术、进而成为美术的一部分,在20世纪20年代成为具有中国特色现代性的一个特殊面向。

Photography was introduced to China through Western colonists, merchants and photographers in the mid-nineteenth century. Later, in the second half of the nineteenth century, Chinese began to incorporate photography into their lives as a demonstration of their response to Western culture as well as to domestic political change. When it comes to the early twentieth century, during the New Policy Reform era, the Qing government promoted photography as an advanced Western technique to save the nation from subjugation. Then, during the 1920s, after the spread of the slogan of revolution in the field of literature and fine arts, photography in China finally became a kind of modern art. By focusing on the historical contexts of early photography in China from 1840s to 1920s, this paper exams how photography participated in the construction and development of modernity in China before the 1920s.