01
Architecture and landscape
Monuments, Temples, and the Built Environment
From the Mountain Resort and the Eight Outer Temples to gates, streets, and regional pagodas, architecture became Jehol’s most enduring visual signature.
Enter themeEARLY VISUAL ARCHIVE · 1890—1945
Visual
Jehol
From imperial residences, travel, and cartography to war reporting and transnational circulation—early images reveal how a historical region was seen, recorded, and imagined.
Putuo Zongcheng Temple, Jehol (Chengde)
Bibliothèque nationale de FranceA growing visual archive of early Jehol
- 2,490
- catalog records
- 110
- source chapters
- 2,490
- cleared for online viewing
00 — About the project
One region,
many ways of seeing
Jehol was never merely the backdrop to an imperial summer residence. It was also the end of a road, a field site for survey expeditions, a frontier administration, a theatre of war, and a visual emblem reproduced around the world.
This project returns images scattered across albums, illustrated magazines, travel writing, institutional archives, and newsreels to their dates, places, makers, and histories of circulation. Here, no photograph is treated as an isolated view.
01 — Thematic reading
How images travelled through Jehol
Five intersecting paths trace the visions of Jehol produced by different photographers, institutions, and media.
02
Routes, passes, and transport
The Road to Jehol
Following mountain roads, passes, ferries, carts, and railways from Beijing to Jehol reveals the paths through which people—and images—moved.
Enter theme
03
Front lines, newspapers, and image politics
1933: War and Circulation
News photography and illustrated papers rapidly reproduced the Jehol campaign, turning a regional front into an event viewed across borders.
Enter theme
04
Measurement, classification, and development
Surveys, Resources, and Modern Knowledge
Geology, mining, forestry, agriculture, and institutional surveys show how Jehol was measured, classified, and translated into resources.
Enter theme
05
Markets, labour, and local society
People, Cities, and Everyday Life
Looking beyond monumental scenery toward streets, labour, dwellings, and people brings traces of everyday life back into view.
Enter theme02 — Digital archive
Begin with one image,
then ask after its history.
An archive is more than an accumulation of images. Dates of exposure and publication, original titles, institutional cataloguing, and later circulation all shape what a photograph can tell us.
The complete archive now includes all 2,490 images cleared for online display.
03 — Research method
Keep uncertainty
inside the archive.
Early images often lack individual credits, while place names and dates may be simplified through repeated publication. Rather than conceal these gaps behind a single confident answer, the archive makes visible what is known—and what remains unresolved.
- 01
Separate different roles
Photographers, expedition leaders, editors, publishers, and holding institutions are catalogued separately.
- 02
Separate different dates
Dates of exposure, publication, compilation, and digitisation are not collapsed into a single field.
- 03
Preserve the limits of evidence
Uncertain places, people, and version relationships are marked as unresolved rather than completed through conjecture.
04 — Full archive
After the project, themes, and method, continue into the complete collection.
Continue into the
full archive
Explore 2,490 photographs, postcards, illustrated publications, and press images from 1890 to 1945. Filter by theme, search the catalogue, and enlarge every record.
Browse the full archive2,490 records