Hedda Morrison Livres

Hedda Morrison's A Photographer in Old Peking , published last year, offered an incomparable visual record of a vanished Peking as it was in the 1930s and '40s. Library Journal called it "remarkable...an unusual and valuable book about pre-1949 China." A fitting sequel to that volume,this book collects more of Morrison's photographs from China during the same period; in this case, her subject is the China beyond Peking's boundaries.Morrison's travels took her such places as Yun Kang, one of the most important Buddhist sites; Jehol, the old Imperial summer seat whose edifices were built by the Emperor Kang Hsi; Hua Shan, the awesome mountain sacred to Taoists; the Shantung coast, where houses were built of stone (unlikeanywhere else in China); and Nanking, a city rich in history and culture in the lush lower Yangtze valley. Ranging from portraits to architectural studies to images of landscapes, the 230 photographs collected here display the same keenness of observation and sympathy for their subjects that wereso in evidence in the earlier book.

Peking is one of the great cities of the world and one of the most fascinating. It has changed so radically in the past thirty years that the city's fabulous past is in danger of being lost to memory. This memoir of Peking from 1933 to 1946, compiled by one of the finest photographers who has ever worked in Asia, is thus a significant document and will be of interest not only to longstanding China-watchers but also to the many tourists who have been privileged to visit Peking in the decade since the city has again been opened to the West. The photographs provide a unique insight into life in Peking in the years preceeding the Communist revolution of 1949. The photographer, Hedda Morrison, left Nazi Germany in 1933 to manage a German-owned photographic studio in Peking. Her sympathetic approach to her subject is manifested in the large number of photographs showing Chinese people from all walks of life at work and enjoying their leisure. Architectural studies provide valuable evidence of buildings and monuments that have since changed or disappeared, and photographs taken beyond Peking and in the Western Hills convey the beauty of the north China landscape.