UCLA Historical Journal

My paper explores questions about the role of photography and visual culture in history, as seen in conjunction with the cultural history of American missionaries in China and Sino-American relations. I read images in concert with text-based sources, using them not only as illustrations, but as historical artifacts and visual documents with their own voices. As windows onto individual and collective meaning-making, photographs and films reflect how missionaries saw themselves, their communities, and the local peoples they worked with. This paper covers a period of approximately two decades, beginning in 1927 and ending with the Communist takeover in 1949. This era saw vigorous foreign missionary activity in China, with American churches participating in significant evangelistic and humanitarian interventions. Many of the missionaries produced photographic and filmic images as personal creative outlets as well as documentary records for transmission to foreign mission boards and supporting church congregations in the United States.

The visual production of these individuals and institutions allows me to situate experiences “on the ground” within both the history of photography and the larger history of Protestant missions in early-to-mid 20^th century China. This paper provides a starting point for greater understanding of the complexities in cross-cultural interactions, 20^th century American transnational perceptions, and the role of religion in the development of modern China. Moreover, it demonstrates the usefulness of historical-visual interdisciplinarity, combining more conventional text-based historiographic methods with visual analysis to produce an effective, multifaceted approach to historical study.