CHINA PHOTOGRAPHS

Summary: The photographs in the Griffis Collection are among its most important resources for researchers. Griffis was keenly interested in documenting and presenting history by means of image as well as text, and he acquired and saved a great number of photographs in a wide variety of formats. Many of these photographs were used as illustrations in his books and articles. They range from cartes-de-visite of associates, friends and contacts, through cabinet photographs (including a large number of cabinet photos of important Meiji-era statesmen) to larger prints showing landscapes, architecture and engineering works. Of particular interest are the early albumen-process photographic prints, including approximately 90 prints clipped from the pages of The Far East, the first English-language newspaper published in Japan (contemporary with Griffis's residence in Tokyo). All photographs found in the course of processing the collection were removed to this series for preservation. It should also be noted that not every photograph in the collection is properly of Griffis provenance; notably, images of Japanese students at Rutgers from the University Archives were early joined with similar pictures in the collection, and are now difficult to segregate.