Seventy-eight years ago, James Lo 羅寄梅 (1902–1987), a photographer with the Central News Agency based in the wartime capital of Chongqing, descended upon the renowned but little understood caves at Dunhuang and Yulin with three cameras: a large 6 x 8 field camera, a 4 x 5 Speed Graflex, and a 35mm Leica. Eighteen months later, Lo and his wife, Lucy (b. 1920), left with 2,567 negatives in varying formats.1 By all accounts, this was the first professional photographic expedition to the Mogao Caves focusing on wall painting and sculpture. Lo paid special attention to the site's physical state, its artistic materiality, and the relationship between living rock and wooden architectural elements. This spectacular nine-volume set, edited by Dora Ching, features seven tomes devoted to Lo's 1943–1944 black-and-white photos. Organized chronologically (vols. 2–8), it also includes two additional volumes, one dedicated to reference matter (vol. 1) and one with...
Visualizing Dunhuang: The Lo Archive Photographs of the Mogao and Yulin Caves
SARAH E. FRASER is Chair Professor, Institute of East Asian Art History, Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, and Changjiang Visiting Professor, Sichuan University. Her research and digital humanities projects include Buddhist and photographic topics focused on northwest China, Inner Asia, twentieth-century wartime archaeology, and artistic practice. She served as Project Director, Mellon International Dunhuang Archive, Northwestern University, in collaboration with the Dunhuang Research Institute (1999–2004). Her recent book publications include Cross Media Women: East Asian Photography, Prints, and Porcelain in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Heidelberg: Arthistoricum, 2021); and Xu Bing: After the Book from the Sky (Singapore: Springer, 2020). She is currently finishing a monograph on twentieth-century Dunhuang and historical memory.
Sarah E. Fraser; Visualizing Dunhuang: The Lo Archive Photographs of the Mogao and Yulin Caves. Archives of Asian Art 1 October 2022; 72 (2): 276–280. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-9953476
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