The formation of modern China is closely associated with the China’s development of images since 20th century. As a result, this project intends to focus and on the issue to do an overall research. Although the project has seven sub-projects, every sub-project can be deemed as an independent one. Thus, in terms of the results, during the first and second year of the project, all the sub-projects aim at investigating and organizing data as the shot-term goal. Afterwards, the data can be applied to medium-term and long-term goals of the project.
Historiophoty, bought out by the historian Hayden White, rose from the U.S. in 1980s. White defines the new noun as following: “to convey history and how people view history with the discourse of visual images and films.” The discipline was introduced to Taiwan in 1990s, and afterwards, some scholars began to research on the related issue. Nevertheless, the number of researches remained few.
Tracing beck to early 19th century, a French optic researcher in1893 invented the photographic technology, and after the Opium Wars, the technology was brought to China due to contacts between China and western countries. Lumière brothers invented the technology of movie in 1895, the end of 19th century, and before long the technology was introduced to China as well. At this point, the ways that Chinese recorded history were no longer limited to words in texts or paintings in picture books. Dynamic images data thus became available, which is the origin of China’s development of images and films during the hundred years.
After the establishment of R.O.C, along with the entry of various western-cultural productions since late Qin Dynasty, occupations related to images and films had become a new trend. For example, news media had applied a great amount of photographical technologies to record news images. As time passed, audio-visual technology had developed rapidly. Dynamic images technology had been widely used and become the films what we see now.
Next, it is necessary to define the project’s topic, images and films. “Images” includes static image data, such as photos; “films” includes dynamic image data, like the combination of pictures and sound, which can be seen as a completed film.
In the development of modern China after 20th century, images and films definitely plays an important role. The technology has kept an abundance of data for modern China, and through retrospecting the data, China’s development during the hundred years can be understood. If the written history is a country’s internalized culture, then, visualized history is a country’s appearance culture. What we know from the realistic expression of appearance culture cannot be replaced by the written history.
The goal of this project is to re-examine the history and problems that cannot be presented by written history with images and films, in hope of establishing a set of basic development theory and concept of historiophoty.
About The Project
2013-02-01