The camera came to China almost as soon as photography was invented, during the First Opium War of 1839-42. It spread slowly at first, mostly in amongst the few ‘treaty ports’ on the China coast and rivers, the only places that European and American merchants were allowed to trade and live.
Canton, Hong Kong and Shanghai were the most important, and consequently this is where many of the early photographs were taken. Shanghai was the first to have a permanent photography studio in 1857, and Hong Kong followed suit three years later but it wasn’t until the freedom of movement treaty in 1901 that itinerant and amateur practitioners began moving outward from these centres to capture the country in full.