Sidney D. Gamble

Sidney D. Gamble (July 12, 1890 – 1968) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to David Berry and Mary Huggins Gamble; grandson of James Gamble, who, with William Procter, founded Procter & Gamble in 1837. in 1912 he graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Literature degree and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He visited China for four extended periods, 1908, 1917–1919, 1924–27, and 1931–1932, doing Christian social work for the Y.M.C.A and conducting social surveys. He is now best known for his remarkable and extensive photographs of Peking and North China.

At his death he left his widow, the former Elizabeth Lowe, four children, Catherine, Louise, David, and Anne, and ten grandchildren. His daughter, Catherine G. Curran, in 1986 established the Sidney D. Gamble Foundation, and the Sidney D. Gamble Lectures are given annually in Pasadena, California.

Gamble first toured in 1908 accompanying his parents, then after graduating from Princeton in 1912, studied labor and industrial economics at University of California, Berkeley, spending six months on a fellowship working at a reform school for delinquent boys. At this time, he built the house which became known as the Sidney D. Gamble House.

In 1917, he joined the work of Princeton-in-Peking and the Peking YMCA where his Princeton friend John Stewart Burgess invited him to do the surveys which resulted in Peking: A Social Survey, which included more than fifty photographs. In 1919 Gamble was on hand to capture dramatic photographs of the May Fourth student demonstrations. The motto of the May Fourth Movement, "To save China through science and democracy," and the missionary ideal of "Saving China through Christianity" for a time seemed to be united. When he returned with his bride, Elizabeth Lowe, to China in 1924, he used his family resources to hire a team of Chinese researchers to survey 283 families. The book was published in 1933 as How Chinese Families Live in Peiping (as Peking was then called). In 1926, Gamble traveled for three weeks in the Soviet Union with Sherwood Eddy, a longtime mentor.

...
Wikipedia