Hedda Hammer Morrison
China
1933-46
Portfolio containing 12 gelatin silver prints, printed before 1945. From 23 x 17.9 cm (24.2 x 19.1 cm) to 17.5 x 22.2 cm (19 x 23.5 cm), both portrait and landscape formats. Each mounted to card and under a mat, thereon signed in pencil below the mat opening. - Box with traces of usage. In original silk covered box.
In 1933 the then 25 year old Hedda Hammer left her native country, which was under control of the Nazis, to work at a commercial photo studio in Peking. During her time in China from 1933 - 1946, she took around 10,000 photographs, of which it is thought that fewer than 1000 have so far been printed and published. Her works can be placed somewhere between travel and documentary photography and depict China throughout the 1930s and 40s from the perspective of a Western photographer fascinated by the beauty of the foreign land. Following the practices established in photo studios of the time in Peking, Morrison created themed albums or allowed her customers, ususally western tourists, to create portfolios of loose prints which were sold as souvenirs. (cf. Claire Roberts, In her view: Hedda Morrison`s photographs of Peking 1933-1946, in: Institute of Advanced Studies Australian National University (ed.), East Asian History, no. 4, Dec. 1992, p. 82f.)
Fritz Wiedemann, former Consular General in Tianjin, originally owned the present two portfolios.
Motives include the silhouette of Qinian Dian, the terrace at Huanqiu Tan as well as Bai ta on Qiong Island at Beijing et al. (Reference source: online database of the Harvard College Library)
Provenance
Collection Fritz Wiedemann; private property, Cologne