Making everyday life : amateur photography and print media in China, ca. 1920-1937

This thesis explores how amateur photography and print media in China between 1920 and 1937 intersected to create a new genre of everyday life photography. A close examination of this largely overlooked category offers a new lens to understand transformations in both the history of photography and the social history of early twentieth-century China. It asks how photography became an everyday social practice among middle- and upper-class urbanites, and how everyday life emerged as a central subject for these amateur photographers. I investigate the role of the Western company Kodak in Shanghai alongside the rapid modernisation of Chinese society, which facilitated photography’s integration into family life, education and travel experiences. This study adopts a critical approach to examine the crucial role of print media and the contextual significance of the public presentation of everyday life photographs in newspapers, magazines and graduation annuals. It emphasises how photography and print media together shaped the conception, representations and social conventions of “everyday life”. My critical analyses of published everyday life photographs reveal how young, modern Chinese men and women used, perceived and engaged with photography and print media to represent, express and aspire to their self-identities, social class, gendered roles, community belonging and national sentiment. This thesis underscores the significance of everyday life photographs — so often regarded as merely ordinary and light-hearted — by uncovering their nuanced cultural and social attributes in the making of everyday life in early twentieth-century China.