Abstract
More than a dozen appellations for photography circulated in China between 1840 and 1911. These designations—from preexisting terms denoting portrait painting to newly coined words such as zhaoxiang (reflecting a portrait with a mirror) and sheying (seizing shadow)—reveal how photography was described, evaluated, categorized, and understood in relation to other visual practices, including painting. Studying the naming of the medium in China not only historicizes the conception of photography but also traces the emergence of a new understanding of visual truth that triggered a reconfiguration in all realms of the production and evaluation of modern Chinese art.
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