Thomas H. Hahn Docu-Images: Featured Galleries and Collections

Serendipity collection (color)

th.hahn@gmail.com (Thomas H. Hahn Docu-Images) — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 11:09:38 GMT

]]>A collection of chance encounters, accidents, and discoveries. A couple of these pictures are arranged ("staged"), otherwise things were left alone and just slightly recontextualized. Against usual (somewhat harried) practice, with these photographs I did pay a bit more attention to exposure and composition.

Taken in the following locations:
Norwich, upstate New York.
New York City, Battery Park.
San Francisco.
Beijing, China.
Sanya, Hainan Island, China.
Bar Harbor, Maine.
Rockland, Massachussetts.
Ithaca, upstate New York.
Paris, France.
Sergiev Posad, Russia.
Marburg, Germany.

In contrast to my other collections and galleries, this collection is not serialized or homogeneous in any way. Cameras and gear differ considerably, from medium format to digital.

Thomas H. Hahn, Ithaca, NY

Early photographs of Daoist sites and practice 道教舊影

th.hahn@gmail.com (Thomas H. Hahn Docu-Images) — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 05:19:22 GMT

]]>A selection of photographs, original and published/printed, related to Daoist sites and practice. The time frame of this collection will extend backwards as far as technically and topically feasible, and forward - hopefully - into the 1970s (through the end of the Cultural Revolution, that is). For more current photographs related to Daoism, see the galleries under "(Sacred) Mountains and Sites in China".

Images such as these are difficult to trace. Outside of Hedda Morrison's photographs of Mt. Hua, with its Daoist cloisters and sword-wielding masters, and Anne Swann Goodrich's study of The Peking Temple of the Eastern Peak: the Tung-yüeh Miao in Peking and its Lore (1964), there is very little coherent visual documentation of Daoism's late Qing and (post-)Republican era history, either published in print, or unpublished as unique mementos. To arrive at materials covering what was left of Daoist practice (or sites) during the CR is an even more fragmented undertaking. The photographs here represent these circumstances, by drawing from Perckhammer (1930), Osvald Siren (1924), Carl Kupfer (1911), Melchers (1921), Boerschmann (1906-09), John D. Zumbrum (1911-1929), Japanese expedition reports, early illustrated Chinese language journals, etc. Some local museums also have started to put on display historical photographs of former places of worship, amongst them Daoist temples. It's a rare thing, though, but fortunately, such is the case for Baotou.

Added - and of considerable interest - is a unique pair of photographs of Daoist Associations (Baoji & Jinan), and a photograph of a Daoist turned filial son-in-mourning who, according to the photograph's description, did not utter a single word over the entire mourning period of three years.

Thomas H. Hahn, Berkeley, CA
Last update: August 2025

Serendipity collection (Monochromes)

th.hahn@gmail.com (Thomas H. Hahn Docu-Images) — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 20:41:11 GMT

]]>A small collection of b/w (monochrome) photographs, taken over a considerable period of time, with very different equipment, such as Hasselblad, Nikon film and Nikon digital, the Ricoh GRD2 and Olympus.

The play with light and shadows is what makes the development of photographs in black and white so exciting.

For portraits and people shots in b/w please visit http://hahn.zenfolio.com/p193233205/ .

Thomas H. Hahn
Ithaca, NY

The Zhalantun Railway Station & environs (1920s)

th.hahn@gmail.com (Thomas H. Hahn Docu-Images) — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 05:02:35 GMT

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