About this archive

A catalogue of photographs and printed pictures of Chinese people made for American audiences, 1866–1944.

What is here

37 catalogued objects from the collection of the Dehuai Foundation for Historical Images, photographed in July 2025 and July 2026. They fall into two groups. The first is nineteenth-century: stereographs — double photographs on a card, viewed through a hand-held stereoscope, the dominant popular photographic format of the century — and a wire-service press print from 1931. The second is the print of the Second World War: posters issued by the United States government and by United China Relief, a Time cover, a comic book, a magazine advertisement, postal covers, photo cards and a signed blood chit. Together they run from 1866 to 1944.

The nineteenth-century objects were made by some of the best-known commercial photographers of the American West — Carleton Watkins, Alfred A. Hart, Thomas Houseworth & Co. — and by publishers in New York, Philadelphia and Washington who bought and reissued other people’s negatives. The wartime objects were made by government agencies, charities, advertisers and publishers in New York and Washington. Almost none of them were made by Chinese people. All of them were made to be sold — or, in wartime, to sell an idea.

The argument

Put these objects in date order and something becomes hard to miss. In 1866 a San Francisco firm photographs a Chinese merchant in its studio and files the card under the heading Chinese. In 1870 a Massachusetts publisher photographs seventy-five young men who have just been brought three thousand miles to break a strike, and sells the view as a local attraction. In 1931 a wire service photographs a young woman on a ship and writes a caption marvelling that her face and her name do not match. In 1942 a Washington office prints a poster of a smiling soldier, labels him with the single word Chinese, and tells the viewer that this man is his friend.

Eighty years, four technologies, one habit: the picture travels with a caption written by someone else, and the caption tells the viewer what they are looking at. This archive exists to put the picture and the caption side by side and let a reader see the join.

How each record is built

The object

Photographed as held, uncropped, on the surface it was laid on. Front and back where the back carries text.

Description

What is actually visible, written plainly, plus what the object is doing as a commercial product.

Transcription

Every word printed, stamped or written on the object, verbatim, including period spellings and period framing. Unreadable spans are marked [illegible].

Context

The verified history the object sits inside. Facts only.

What is not known

Explicit. Every inferred date, unconfirmed pairing and unidentified sitter is listed.

On transcribing the captions

What this archive does not claim

It does not claim to recover the experience of the people photographed. In the nineteenth-century material, with two exceptions — a merchant named on a mount and a young woman named in a caption — nobody is identified, and this archive has not identified them. The wartime material names generals and a founding president, and never the soldiers, farmers and children drawn or photographed to stand for China. What survives is the commercial and political record: who made the picture, who circulated it, and what they wrote on it. That is a real historical source, and it is a partial one, and the catalogue says so on every record.

The collection

Every object in this catalogue is held by the Dehuai Foundation for Historical Images, which made them available to be photographed and catalogued. The Foundation’s mark is stamped on each published image, and the images are reproduced here with its permission.

Who made this

Tarita Foundation Archive is a project of Tarita Foundation, edited by Jeffrey Liu. Corrections are welcome and wanted — see Contribute.