Album photographique - La Vie chinoise aux champs et au village (Photographies prises pendant la Campagne de Chine Pi-tchi-li - Sept. 1900 - Juillet 1901)

Photograph album: Chinese life in the fields and in the villages/ Urban and rural Chinese life (Photographs taken during the Chinese campaign Pi tchi li 14 August 1900 – 18 September 1901 by a military Doctor)Exceptional album bringing together a total of 62 original photographs, contemporary albumen and silver prints. These photos were taken between 1900 and 1901 by the French military doctor Henry Coullaud (1872-1954).
Contemporary half red cloth over flower-patterned paper, red label with Chinese characters laid down on upper covers.
The Chinese calligraphy on this label, as Professor Denis Coullaud explains, is of the doctor's surname. The Chinese inscription in black letters on the crimson background of a thin vertical strip could be translated as: “To Koo-Loo, whose magical hand brings back the spring.” This is known as a “paï-pien”.
“This gift was presented on a fine spring morning in 1900, with great pomp and circumstance, to the nasal tone of a clarinet accompanied by the thin sound of a small flute and a tambourine. This was the Wang family's way of expressing their thanks for Major Coullaud's successfully operating on the patriarch's cataract. The Chinese had translated his name by its phonetic equivalent into two characters, Koo and Loo,” (in Denis Coullaud, La Main merveilleuse qui rend le printemps, 1992).
“Each image has been annotated (place and title) by the photographer, who also inscribed a title in ink on the first page of the album: “La Vie chinoise aux champs et au village (Photographies prises pendant la Campagne de Chine Pi-tchi-li – Sept. 1900 – Juillet 1901).”
A young military doctor weary of barracks life in mainland and dreaming of adventure, Henry Coullaud requested to be sent out to join the Campaign in China. His request was approved and he left on 19 August 1900 on board the Alexandre III as part of the 1st march Batallion of an Infantry Regiment.
The photographs have been taken in the various Chinese cities which Doctor Coullaud visited: Tong-Koo, Tien-Tsin, Pao-Ting-Foo, Tin-Tjô, Cheng-Feng, Sou-Kiao, Si-Gnan-Shien and Tai-To.
The first part of the album contains photographs of historical monuments, cityscapes, pagodas, towers, walls. Coullaud also took pictures of high-ranking individuals, Chinese dignitaries posing with French officers.
A few of the images bring across the strange atmosphere at the time of the height of the Boxer Rising: faces of rebels displayed in cages in the public squares, French officers throwing coins to the populace on the occasion of 14 July.
But what fascinated the young photographer most of all was the life of the locals, both in the cities and in the provinces. More than a wandering doctor, he becomes a true ethnographer immortalizing rural scenes, which he then captions with plenty of humor: “In search of manure (no manure around!)” and “Children (Growing China)”. He takes advantage of monsoon season to photograph various stages of the agricultural process: sowing, gleaning, and harvesting are all captured by his lens. He also took part in the drying of the harvest, the crushing of spices and even in flour milling. River life is also a theme dear to Coullaud, who immortalizes people mid-stream: cormorant fishermen, bathers, washerwomen and boatmen. The figure of the major himself pops up now and again, and, like a good reporter, he doesn't fail to photograph Chinese war-junks and French river convoys. The fact that his wandering clinic stopped in various different Chinese cities gave him the opportunity to get to know the urban population. His images are a precious witness to all the various minor trades of the time: money-bearers (of the famous, pierced Chinese Cash coins), waterbearers, barbers, postmen, cobblers, grocers, and so on. His work is mostly focused on street characters, from the equilibrists and blind musicians to the haunted faces of opium addicts. His medical status allowed him to rub shoulders with all levels of society, from Chinese dignitaries to deprived peasants. Close to the locals, he even made it into their inner circles and took the occasion to make superb photos, especially of Tatar and Chinese women with tiny bound feet, a few years before the banning of this thousands of years-old tradition of erotically-inspired mutilation. Witness to a traditional Chinese burial, Coullaud made a little documentary composed of ten photos showing the various stages of the ritual.
With this unique album, an important memorial with ethnological merit, Major Henry Coullaud gives us a glimpse into life in China at the turn of the 20^th century.