Lai Fong, Women from Amoy, 1870s, albumen silver print

Dragon Women: Early Chinese Photography
March 14 – May 15, 2024
Asia Week Hours: Mar 14-15 & 18-22, 10:30am-5pm; Mar 16-17, 1-5pm (otherwise by appointment)
Opening Reception: Friday, March 15, 6-9pm with Female Lion Dance Performance
10 W. 18th Street, 7th Floor Penthouse

Loewentheil Photography of China Collection is pleased to present Dragon Women: Early Photographs of China during this year’s Asia Week New York, which offers a rare occasion to view some of the earliest photographs of Chinese women, most taken in the 1860s and 1870s. Celebrating the Year of the Dragon, the exhibition explores women’s place in society in the final decades of imperial China, as well as the representation of Chinese women in photography, exposing female attitudes toward the camera in the late Qing dynasty.

Highlights include a rare photographs by the first known Chinese female photographer, Mae Linda Talbot, and works by Hedda Morrison, and Isabella Bird, as well as masterworks by Chinese and international photographers such as Sze Yuan Ming Studio, Pun Lun Studio, A Chan Studio, Lai Fong, and John Thomson, whose Portrait of Three Women in Beijing, circa 1868, is on view.

John Thomson, Portrait of Three Women, c. 1868, albumen silver print

To learn more, click here.