Lai Afong
| Lai Afong | |
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Only known self-portrait and autograph of Lai Afong. c.1870
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| Born | 1838/1839 Gaoming District, China |
| Died |
(aged 51) Hong Kong |
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Lai Afong (Chinese: 赖阿芳) (c.1839 - 1890) was a Chinese photographer who established Afong Studio, one of the early photographic studios in Hong Kong. He is considered to be the most significant Chinese photographer of the nineteenth century.
His studio was active from 1859 to around the 1940s. The business was probably taken over by his son in the 1890s. Subject matters ranged from portraits and social life pictures to cityscapes and landscapes. Lai's work and person were praised by John Thomson, a Scottish photographer working in China at the time, in Thomson's book The Straits of Malacca, Indo-China, and China. Lai's experience totally originated into the Western community, but it still reveals the same sensibility of the literati painting which embodied both learned references to the styles of ancient masters and the inner spirit of the artist. According to the verso of many of his Carte de visite works, he was photographer to Sir Arthur Kennedy KCB and Grand Duke Alexis.
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