Home»Historical photographs of China 中国摄影史图片库»The Seestern Lantern Slides of c.1920

The Seestern Series is a collection of fifty (magic) lantern slides, that is, b/w glass slides, 83 x 97mm each, covering China, Manchuria, and Korea. The slides were used in the classroom of gymnasiums and at universities in undergraduate studies in Germany and Austria. This particular series (part CLVIII of the so-called CL series) on East Asia belonged to a much larger scheme, the "Bibliotheca cosmographica", which basically covered the entire then known surface of the earth. It is a very rare and complete set. Each slide is numbered and annotated. I have translated the original German annotations into English.

Images 1 - 36 are scenes from China;
Images 37 - 41 cover Manchuria;
Images 42 - 50 represent scenes from Korea.

The photographs are dedicated to a surprisingly wide range of issues, such as landscape, architecture, portraiture, social conditions (image 19 captures student demonstrations and social unrest), industry and commerce.

Scanned in color with a Canon 8600F flatbed scanner to 1200 dpi TIF, converted to grayscale and into JPG format.

Original TIF files upon request.

Thomas H. Hahn
Ithaca, NY