Authors in Conversation, Ep. 1 with Emily Conroy-Krutz and Joseph W. Ho

8:20PM Apr 11, 2022

Speakers:

Emily Conroy-Krutz

Joseph W. Ho

Keywords:

china

film

images

missionary

missionaries

camera

thinking

chinese

book

people

japanese

eastman kodak

world

modern

war

united states

technology

audiences

international

photographs

Welcome to Authors in Conversation, the United States in the World Series Podcast from Cornell University Press. Hi there, I'm Emily Conroy-Krutz. I'm one of the editors at US in the World at Cornell University Press. Today I'm being joined by Joseph Ho, an Assistant Professor in the History Department at Albion College and the author of Developing Mission: Photography, Filmmaking and American Missionaries in Modern China. In addition to this book, Jo is the co-editor of War and Occupation in China: The Letters of an American Missionary from Hangzhou, 1937 - 1938. And so we're gonna talk today about missions, about photography, about China, and US China relations. And I am just so excited to hear you talk more about your work and about this wonderful book. So welcome, Joe, thanks for joining me.

Thank you so much.

Can we get started? If you want to tell us about how you got into the topic? What brought you to the study of missionary photography?

Yeah, so I was thinking about the intersections between visual culture Americans in China, international encounters really, as an outgrowth of research I was doing at the end of my undergraduate period, at UC San Diego. And it really was an encounter with the descendants of American missionaries, that I was able to really get into this world of thinking about missionaries, as modern individuals in China, equipped with cameras thinking about their experience, their encounters, and also the ways in which modernity and images collide is in the 20th century, kind of as an outgrowth of a work I was doing on photographers in wartime China, in the 1930s, and 40s.

Yeah, so can you tell us a bit more about these pictures? Because I know, you know, I've worked in Mission archives too. And, you know, one of the things I love about your book is that it's helped me to, to see those archives differently and think differently about those photographs that I sometimes flip through a little bit, you know, oh, that's what that guy looks like. And then I can kind of move on. But you have a really, I think, because of your, your own background in photography, and your real interest in the technology here. You help us to think about these really differently. So what kinds of photos are we talking about here? What are they being used for? And how are they being created?

It's a great question. So it's a wide range. And when you typically think about this experience of American missionaries, taking photographs or producing films, in China, they range from the kinds of images that would be considered family images, images, especially in Protestant circles of children and your family members and loved ones, but also religious activity, the building of churches, communities that these missionaries are involved with, in interwar China, the 20s 30s, and into the 40s, really, but they also start to branch out from there, we have images, films and photographs of the repercussions of war of the second sino Japanese war, the invasion of China of regime change in the late 1940s, as the People's Republic of China comes into being. So these images really cross this spectrum of private and public and international and local imagery as they move through this historical time period. And they're incredibly diverse.

Some of these are gathered in archival collections with some of these are still in personal hands, right?

That's right. So a great number of images that I use in this book, and also the texts and contextual information that goes with them are held by families, or even by religious orders a white again, a wide range of sources. And this is something to be said about the nature of these images and these experiences. They pass through these multiple historical contexts. They move from private spaces to public spaces, and sometimes they end up with their afterlives in closets and attics, basements and garages of the descendants of missionary families. And that says something about how as these images move through time and through space, the imaginations about them also shifts and one of the goals of my book was to track how these developments happen and How image making processes and technologies and ways of thinking about images as experience have evolved over time.

Right? And, and part of this is a story about modernity, right? And so you you mentioned earlier right thinking about these missionary photographer says, you know, a modern person with a camera. And in the book, you use the phrase, missionary and modernity, a bit. And I think visual modernity, too. Can you sort of talk us through what you mean there by? What does it mean to be a modern person with a camera, as a missionary out in China?

Yeah. So these missionaries, especially in the 20s, and 30s, and 40s, are thinking about themselves as modern individuals. And their positing their work in relationship to earlier forms of mission that were more profoundly focused on forms of Christian imperialism, as Emily you've written about, and also kind of traditional forms of evangelism where one's goal or primary goal is to go to a place and in propagates religious ideas. The missionaries of this time period, the one that ones I work on, are thinking more about themselves as citizens of a global community, that they are engaged in religious work, like their predecessors, but doing it with modern methods, modern methods of communication, of partnership with people on the ground in the communities that they're entering. And there's this excellent article that the Chinese recorder, which is this ecumenical mission magazine, that is published in Shanghai, publishes this article in 1929. That is entitled, The modern significance of the missionary. And it basically lays out this idea, this ideology, that missionaries are citizens of every country to which they go, as well as citizens of the countries from which they come. And this is meant to really foreground ideas that are carried out in Michael G. Thompson's book, For God and Globe, Christian internationalism, that this is a new way of thinking about international and transnational belonging that is expressed in things like modern technology, modern documentation, and working with partners, both in the state and in local communities, that are thinking about this condition in profoundly modern ways.

Great. And so how does film technology figure into them? Do we see them sort of develop using different types of cameras over time or sort of adopting, sort of bringing with them American technologies? Or are they adopting Chinese technologies? How does that all work out?

Yeah, so certainly the cameras that are being brought to China or being purchased in China, there are international commercial networks behind all of these things. You know, Eastman Kodak is huge. German imports of cameras and film technology are also big. But what's happening with the technology is that American missionaries, and also Chinese Christians and Chinese colleagues, who may or may not be Christian, are also adopting documentary forms of imaging that are based around smaller cameras, the ability to produce vernacular images, using these compact, highly mobile, still photographic technology as well as moving picture technology. And this creates a visual culture in which these ideas about modernity about Christian internationalism, and about seeing the world in a kind of Cosmopolitan, and also locally embedded lights come to the forefront.

And who's looking at so we talked a little bit before about how these are both private and public sources that kind of move through different hands at different points, is how are Americans at home receiving and experiencing these kinds of sources? Because it's, I think you're in part of this sort of the performance of this modernity. And this Christian internationalism is about sort of what's happening in China. And part of it's what's happening back in United States, right?

That's right. So missionary images are circulating, they're moving between areas in China and United States, and also images of the United States are also going to China and there's this wonderful example in the third chapter of my book, where this one missionary family the Henke family, received a movie camera, a 16 millimeter Cine-Kodak Model B movie camera, that is the product of a Christmas 1930 collection that a congregation in Rye, New York puts together to purchase this camera for them. And the Henkes received this camera in North China, they produce all of these films of their medical missionary activity of local communities. And they're essentially experimenting, they're narrating China and their spaces through the lens of this movie camera. And, of course, the splicing, the editing, the movement of the camera through the space of the mission, and this medical community and Christian community are all part of this. But then what's interesting is that they take this film, they bring it back to the United States, of course, they screen it for all of these American congregations in the Midwest on the East Coast, of course, in Rye, New York. And the goal, of course, is to show that they're bridging this divide between the need to evangelize and the need to bring humanitarian and medical aid to China. And of course, part of this is for fundraising. Part of this is to involve the communities that they're in in the United States, in this international exchange, but then when they are going to go back to China, they then film scenes in the United States using that same camera. And what the Henkes do is that they avoid filming things like big cities, and, you know, huge differences in American culture and Chinese culture. They film rural areas, they film farmers, and rural circuses, and their home communities. And they bring that film back to China to screen for their co-workers, for their church, for the Chinese people in that area. And they're trying to bridge these two worlds, the worlds of China, the world of the United States during the Great Depression, by latching on to similar visual tropes and visual cues that will allow audiences on both sides of the Pacific to essentially see each other in association with each other through the medium of film.

That is one of my favorite parts. The the Rye, New York story is one of my favorite stories from the book. And I, you know, one of the things that, as I'm sort of realizing we're sitting here and talking and, you know, a podcast is, of course, you know, an auditory form, and we're talking about a visual for him, it's a little hard, but I one of the things that I've found really helpful about your work and has helped me sort of think through this is the relationship between the missionary and, you know, the potential convert is, you know, we talk about that a lot, you've sort of mentioned sort of imperialism are some of our, one of the main frameworks that we've sort of, as a field often used to talk about that dynamic. And, you know, historians have been sort of playing with and challenging those ideas for a long time. And one of the things that your discussion of cameras does, and so that the way that these, these films are being shared, and also the ways they're being created, that surprised me, is in terms of even the posture of the photographer stands in. So I'm wondering if you can start talk us through for listeners who aren't familiar with some of the, you know, early 20th century technology of you know, what it would mean for a missionary to be taking these pictures and sort of the power dynamics between the photographer and the photographed? If you can sort of talk us through that a little bit, because I, the point you were just making about, you know, what they're choosing to share about American culture, when they're bringing videos back to China is, I think, maybe speaks to sort of similar dynamics here that it's not about, you know, the photographer is necessarily the sort of powerful one in charge, right? There's more of a conversation going on, in some ways, right?

Absolutely. And this, yeah. And so this certainly comes back to the question of what it means to have a kind of performance, right, that making an image is part process, technically, and part performance. And to answer your question about what this would have meant for a missionary to perhaps take a still photograph. There are these smaller cameras that basically require the missionary or really whoever is taking the picture to look down into a viewfinder that then projects this image up to them, allowing them to frame the image and focus. These are the Originally, what we would call twin lens reflex cameras that are exceedingly popular during this time period. But what is lost and just looking at the end product, just the photograph is that if you see the posture, the photographer takes in making this image, they have to basically bow toward their subjects, they have to curl up in a ball and look down into the, into this viewfinder and what they're doing, as opposed to, you know, pointing a camera at someone like a gun, or one of these earlier cameras, that is like giant that takes up, you know, there's all this space, you've got this missionary, curled up in a ball with his little camera, bowing toward the person or people or things that she or he is making an image of, and that presents a different kind of relationship physically and performatively in relation to people in front of the lens, and, you know, small things like that, and even the kinds of ways that, like in the hankie films, they're filming a scene and all of a sudden, some, some of a sudden someone steps in, and you can see the filmmaker stopped the camera, and then, you know, they turn the camera back on, and they're, you know, the person somewhere else, or they're talking to someone else. And they're cognizant that their presence in the environment is in a way disrupting or changing some kind of interaction with them. So they're trying these missionaries are trying very hard, or to utilize the technology to present a kind of connection, a conversation, as opposed to imposing something on the communities and people that they're photographing. So in many ways, it is very much a conversation that is guided and framed, if you will, by the technologies that they're employing.

I see what you did there. Can you mean so so you are yourself a photographer? And in a very skilled one, I've enjoyed looking at the pictures on your website? Um, can you talk us through a little bit about your methodology? Do you think that having this background, yourself has helped you sort of approach these sources in a new way and tell this story differently? or So how do you? How do you frame yourself as a as a as a history? What What methods do you rely on?

Yeah, so these are methods that I also talk about in my Visualizing East Asia class that I teach at Albion, but I tend to think about the process of making images as really central to how we will, as historians, as readers, as viewers, consider the lives and contexts through which images pass. And I talked about this in in terms of the relationship between subject maker and audience in the creation of a photographic or filmic image, asking these questions of, you know, who are the subjects, while how, what's their relationship to the maker to the person or people with the imaging technology? And what is the relationship between the maker with the audience interpreting receiving circulating these images. And once one thinks about images as part of a process, and part of these relationships between subjects maker, an audience, you start to see where these images have resonance with historical experience. Now, of course, parts of this require detective work, they require reading against the grain, kind of making conjectures about the apparatus that was used, or the ways in which the people in front of the lens interacted with the camera person, or even how audiences back in the United States received these things or audiences in China. But once you see these relationships, and these categories, it just makes for such a richer experience interacting with these materials. And we do this all the time. I mean, a selfie is the epitome of being the subject maker and the audience all in one. But we are always interacting with whether you're the subject of an image, you're making an image or you're receiving an image. And it's just it just helps to connect that to the kinds of material that I work with.

And so when we think about images in this way, how does that help us understand differently, what is the relationship between the United States and China in these really critical decades of the early 20th century?

Yeah. So I think what it tells us is that a lot of these microhistories exist under the kind of under the radar, within the rubric of these broader interactions through diplomacy, and religion and trade and conflict between the US and China and also with regional powers. But a lot of these experiences are truly micro histories. They are this part of this, these moments, these experiences where people are thinking in terms of images, they're thinking in terms of encounters, that are locally embedded, these missionaries are living for years and years, in these environments, learning Chinese translating the culture, both for themselves and their churches, as well as translating American ideas and culture for local people. And once you see that cameras and visual imaginations are part of this equation. It enriches the ways in which we might think about US China relations on the macro level, we see that these images are pulling these threads of history, through the ground level up to these larger transformations of evolutions on the international stage. And that I believe sheds new light on how we might think about encounters between the United States and China. And also the role of visual experience in all of these.

Yeah, so let's talk. I mean, it's really dig into that a little bit deeper here, because you were you were sort of talking about what types of photographs were you're working with, with their family pictures, there are photos of mission buildings and religious activities. And there's also pictures of, you know, warfare and, and violence. So how do these different categories of photos get used differently? Do we see the missionary sort of become the way of sort of narrating ongoing sort of, you know, major political events, on the military events they're living through for foreign audiences? And how, how does that happen?

Yeah, absolutely. So part of this is that the missionaries come to China, they are embedded in these environments, and they bring their cameras, but China evolves around them. Chinese politics develop in terms of the rise of nationalism, the rise of Chinese communism. And then in 1937, the Japanese, the Japanese military, invades China, and launches essentially the second Sino-Japanese war. And these missionaries are then very well placed to become documenters of this conflict. They have the cameras, they have the embeddedness, they have the language. And they're also seen as foreign neutrals, neutral citizens who are not involved officially on either side. So they're there. And for example, one of these missionaries, the Reverend John Magee has this 16 millimeter movie camera, and he is in the city of Nanjing, when the Japanese occupy the city, and then produces perhaps the only film footage that we have of the atrocities that the Japanese military enacted toward the Chinese civilian population. And McGee takes these these incredibly detailed and also horrific notes, to accompany his films, and he's shooting all of these real reels of film, documenting brutality, casualties, destruction of property, Chinese civilians, being led away by these Japanese military units for execution. And he goes into the hospital that is being staffed by these medical missionaries at the University of Nanjing, and he films, broken bodies and people who have been, you know, raped and assaulted and attacked and all these ways. And he does this in order to raise awareness about the brutality of war. And what is often lost in this equation is that Magee produced these films and he writes about this, he says, I do not want to stir up a spirit of hatred against the Japanese. It's not the Japanese people's fault. It's the Japanese leadership and the Japanese military, who are the ones who are carrying this out, and he uses the film itself as a missionary artifact, but not carrying religious ideas, but rather carrying an anti war message out to the rest of the world in order to inform, expose and make aware of these other ideas. The emphasis is to other audiences that these things are happening. And we must do everything we can to stop this war.

Absolutely yeah, and you and I were talking, before we started recording about some of the contemporary resonance of, of that theme was, of course, this is something that, you know, sadly is sort of timeless thinking about how visual culture of, you know, the control of what kinds of images get, get to broader audiences of various atrocities, do you want us to speak a little bit to some of the ways that you see this being mirrored in in our contemporary moment?

Sure. So I've been thinking a lot about this in our present moment, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the conflict there, that there are all these echoes of what's going on, in China during the 1930s, with a Japanese invasion, that these missionaries are, again, thinking about how their visual materials will somehow bring awareness to the brutality and destruction on the ground. They're the ones who are embedded just like now we see, you know, all sorts of people from Ukrainian civilians, to international journalists on the ground in Ukraine, covering these images, and producing these images of the war. But it's also in opposition to or trying to break through this barrier of propaganda. Because the missionaries in China know that what they're up against is Japanese military and political propaganda. That is basically saying, again, interesting echoes that we are here to help the Chinese, we are here to essentially launch this invasion, with real justification of, you know, driving out communist and all these things, right. And there's this echo here, that's I just was thinking about as we I was listening to President Solinsky is address right before the invasion, that he was addressing the Russian people directly. And saying, Russian state television is not going to air my message. But I want to speak to the Russian people and say, Do you want this war, and if not, stop this, you know, make sure this doesn't happen. And the resilience he's been doing this with multiple groups around the world, and we're seeing here in the 21st century, this eco this parallel, where media on the ground, whether it is 16 millimeter film, in 1937, China, or TikToks, and social media today, in 2022, are attempting to break through the barrier of Russian propaganda or in '37 Japanese propaganda, to try to stop this conflict or bring awareness to the injustice of this conflict.

So fascinating. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what you know, maybe to move us from from thinking about war, to think about the fun of archive discoveries that have a whiplash there may be but what, what are some of the most fun, you know, the things you like I've enjoyed the most in your, in your research, one of the surprises you found the archives some of the stories that have really stayed with you, what have you. What are some of those gems that you could share with our listeners?

Yeah, so one of these, and it shows up in the fourth chapter of my book would be the odyssey of a roll of film, the life of this roll of film. And it really comes down to I guess back to the the war, an American missionary family, who is interns put under house arrest in North China after the Japanese occupation and also after Pearl Harbor in 1941. So they're under house arrest, and they have a movie camera. And they essentially film a message in a bottle. They have their family members and their friends and their Chinese colleagues just gather in the house where they're being held. And they film all sorts of daily life. You know, kids doing homework, people cooking, eating together, different missionaries, just waving at the camera walking around kids playing all that. And then they have to figure out where to take this film. And there's only one place in the world in 1942 where Kodachrome color film can be published up sorry, developed my bad and that is the Eastman Kodak plant in Rochester, New York. So what are they do? They smuggle the film out. It goes across wartime China across Japanese lines, Chinese lines ends up in free China or West China where the Nationalists have control. It's loaded on an aircraft taken across the Himalayas, put on a ship taken across the Atlantic and ends up at Eastman Kodak, where it is processed and is time consuming set of steps and stays there because there's no forwarding address. Now, the family, by sheer coincidence is repatriated in 1943. And they go across around the world, and they end up back in United States and of all places. The father, the medical missionary, Fred Scovel lands a job as company physician at Eastman Kodak. And there some person walks over and says, you know, hey, Scovel Is this your film, and the film is reunited with the family. And I just had this amazing moment where I was able to look at this film and handle that reel that had traveled 1000s of miles across the wartime world. And I was thinking at any point in that process in this history, it could have disappeared, it could have been lost. And yet, here I was having the privilege of working with this family and looking at this film, and just seeing these very ordinary image images that were appearing in rather extraordinary times.

That is just amazing. And to think about the stories behind those, those pictures that we just, you know, we you we think of as illustrations sometimes and you were able to bring to life such a such rich stories behind them. It's really remarkable. So what what's next for you, Joe? What are you working on these days?

Yeah, so two different projects. One is a co-authored book with Anthony Clark at Whitworth University. And it's a kind of a sequel to my current projects, where I'll be folk will be focusing specifically on Catholic photography and the evolution of modern China. So that's one project. And my second project is a monograph on media in the Cold War, and specifically Cold War Asia. And it's tentatively titled Bamboo Wireless: Mediating the Cold War in Asia and thinking about how what happens to these missionaries after they're expelled from China, and also when we have educators and military personnel in places like Taiwan and Thailand, producing media as part of other kinds of arcs of containments in this period,

That sounds fantastic. I can't wait to hear more. Thanks so much for joining us, and I can't wait to see what you come up with next.

Well, thanks for having me.

Take care, everybody. Thanks for listening to authors in conversation, the United States and the world series podcast from Cornell University Press.