Who were the first foreigners to take photos in China?

As Marx pointed out: British artillery undermined the authority of the Chinese emperor and forced the Celestial Empire into contact with the earthly world.

Photography, an imported product, also spread in China as foreign photographers came to China to take pictures.

Since then, photography has entered the lives of ordinary Chinese people, even in the heavily guarded palace.

1. The first foreigner to come to China to take photos

The Frenchman Jules Itier was the first person to bring photography to China. In 1844, as a French customs prosecutor, he came to China with the French trade negotiation team to participate in the negotiations on the Whampoa Treaty between China and France.

While in China, Egypt used daguerreotype photography to take portraits of representatives of the two countries. They are the French representative Lachani and the governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi Qiying. Qiying later mentioned in a memorial to the emperor that he had exchanged "little photos" with envoys from Britain, France, the United States, Portugal and other countries. This photo was taken by Eyre, only five years after the Daguerreotype was announced. It is the earliest photo taken in China.

In addition, he also shot a lot of city scenery and street scenes in Guangzhou, Macau, Hong Kong and other places. In Guangzhou, he took pictures of the docks and the city, as well as portraits of Pan Shicheng, a comprador from a foreign bank, and photos of his courtyard and villa.

Egyle returned to France in June 1845. Some of the photos he took in China were successively published in French newspapers from 1848 to 1853, and some were even included in the History of French Photography published in 1920.

This batch of daguerreotypes taken by Emile in China, as well as his own handwritten captions, are now preserved in the Museum of Photography in the suburbs of Paris, France. There are a total of 36 of them. These photos are cherished and collected by people for their precious historical value.