Early Shanghai Urban Photography And Visual Modernity

As Shanghai was forced to open its ports in the late Qing Dynasty,the trend of things moving from west to east prevailed in Shanghai,and cameras landed on the Shanghai together with western powers.The visual wave triggered by cameras and photographs haven brought brand-new sensory experience to the urban masses.Around the theme of photography,a visual change has taken place in the city.This new wave of vision has not only changed the traditional way people watch and be seen,but also quietly affected people's behavior,culture,society and thoughts,thus imperceptibly penetrating into history.This article starts with photography and tries to observe,examine and think about the internal connection between photography and the urban masses and civil society in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China from the perspective of the history of photography.The dissertation takes visual modernity as the research perspective.Starting from the change of the viewing mode of the urban public by photography,this paper probes into the relationship between the viewing and being viewed caused by the camera and the photos.Then it is transferred to the mirror image theory often involved in visual research.In the mirror image discussion,the self and the other are a pair of important concepts that appear at the same time.Following the development of self and others,on the one hand,it will be linked with discussions in the east and the west,on the other hand,it will also involve the relationship between subject and rationality in a deeper level,thus bringing the research into the speculation of modernity.At the same time,the research of the dissertation also transits from sorting out historical materials to cultural thoughts.It is the dissertation of the information based on visual content,so the study of modernity also turned to the thinking of visual modernity.According to the principle of modernity,the study of visual modernity is to discuss various issues of modernity through the analysis of visual data.The visual materials in this article are obviously the history of photography.Through the analysis of the early photography history and the middle and late photography history,this paper attempts to analyze the problem of whether modernity is achieved or not.According to the time,this article focuses on six aspects in turn,photography as technology,photography as fashion,photography as politics,photography as landscape,photography as advertisement and photography as art.Photography as a technology is the starting point of the whole study.Together with photography as a fashion,it focuses on the body and physiological desires of urban subjects.Photography as politics and photography as landscape focus on the urban subject's expectation of identity and society.Photography as advertisement and photography as art focus on the pursuit of spirit and culture by urban subjects.These six aspects are not only in line with the development of Shanghai's photographic history,but also in accordance with the natural development of the subject,from body to identity to spirit.In the end,according to the development of historical facts,the urban subject,due to lack of sufficient rationality and reflection,has always sunk into the illusory world of desire and imagination,and cannot realize the establishment of modernity,that is,the failure of visual modernity.The failure of visual modernity is not a logical deduction out of thin air,but is closely linked with the history of urban photography.In such a historical era,the use and understanding of modern implements by the urban masses only stay in appearance rather than substance,which reflects the lack of thinking about modernity by the state and even the nation.This absence of modernity/visual modernity will not only give a hint to contemporary Chinese photography practice,but also bring rich inspiration to China's present and future beyond modernization.