Photo Poetics - (Global Chinese Culture) by Shengqing Wu

The Photo Poetics book by Shengqing Wu is a groundbreaking exploration of how Chinese aesthetic culture transformed the medium of photography in the late Qing and early Republican eras.

Through extensive archival research, Wu details the complex negotiations between poetry and photography, examining how traditional textual forms collaborated with the new visual culture.

This interdisciplinary study spans literary studies, visual culture, and media history, providing an original account of media culture in early twentieth-century China.

With a focus on self-representation in portrait photography, gifts of inscribed photographs, mass-media circulation of images of beautiful women, and photography of ghosts, immortals, and imagined landscapes, Wu argues that the Chinese lyrical tradition provided rich resources for artistic creativity, self-expression, and embodied experience in the face of an increasingly technological and image-oriented society.

Whether you're a scholar of Chinese literature or culture, a photography enthusiast, or simply someone interested in the intersection of art and technology, Photo Poetics is a must-read.