LibGuides: 21F.027J/21H.250J: Asia in the Modern World: Images and Representations: Find Images

Visual Literacy

Visual literacy is an important 21st century skill that increases one's ability to:

Locate, criticaly evaluate and effectively use visual information
Determine the source of an image and its metadata
Understand the copyright restrictions on the use of an image
Properly cite an image

"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera."

-Dorothea Lange, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1978

Visual Literacy Exercises

Using Images: Copyright and Fair Use

DOME

Find Images from the MIT Libraries' Collections

Image Resources at MIT

ARTstor
A subscription based digital library of over one million images related to art, architecture, the humanities and social sciences
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See ARTstor Terms and Conditions of Use handout on this page
Dome at MIT
Digital repository for collections from the MIT Libraries, including Rotch Visual Collections and the Institute Archives
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See Using DOME Handout available on this page
Illustrated London News Historical Archive 1842-2003
Digital archive of the world's first pictorial newspaper. Covers British and world events. Full-color facsimile and searchable text. 1842-2003.
Credo Reference
Illustrations in over 550 reference works such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, biographies

Internet Resources: Images of Asia

Botanical and Cultural Images of Eastern Asia, 1907-1927 (Harvard University)
Photographs from the Arnold Arboretum’s collection, taken by plant explorers in the early years of the 20th century. The online collection is organized into sections, including buildings, trees, daily life, and landscapes.
Carpenter Collection (Library of Congress)
About 1600 photographs, ca. 1860-1934, produced and gathered by Frank G. Carpenter (1855-1924) and his daughter Frances (1890-1972) to illustrate his writings on travel and world geography.
The Chairman Smiles: Posters from the former Soviet Union, Cuba and China
Over 20 Chinese posters from 1949 to the early 1990s. Part of an online exhibit from International Institute of Social History in the Netherlands.
East Asia Image Collections (Lafayette College)
Photographs, negatives, postcards, and slides of imperial Japan (1868-1945), its Asian empire (1895-1945) and occupied Japan (1947-52), including images of Taiwan, Japan, China, Korea, Manchuria, and Indonesia.
East Asian Collection (University of Wisconsin)
Images that document early 20th century China, including the the Sino-Japanese Conflict (1937-1945), a visual history of Buddhist practices and temples in China, and other images of daily life in both rural and urban China.
Edward Bangs Drew Collection (Harvard University)
More than 500 photographs collected by Edward Bangs Drew, who worked in China at the end of the 19th century.
Fine Prints: Japanese, pre-1915 (Library of Congress)
Japanese woodblock prints and drawings, dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, by such artists as Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi, Sadahide, and Yoshiiku. Subjects include actors, women, landscapes, scenes from Japanese literature and daily life, and Western foreigners.
Great Kanto Earthquake (Brown University)
Over 100 photographs taken in Yokohama, Kyoto, Shanghai, and Hawaii, as well as many photographs purchased in Japan that document the 1923 earthquake's devastation. Also includes newspaper clippings, telegrams, postcards, and travel keepsakes.
The Hedda Morrison Photographs of China (Harvard University)
Thousands of photographs taken by Hedda Hammer Morrison (1908–1991) while resident in Beijing from 1933 to 1946, documenting lifestyles, trades, handicrafts, landscapes, religious practices, and architectual structures that in many cases have all but disappeared from modern China.
"Japan-in-America": The Russo-Japanese War in Political Cartoons
Images from an exhibit sponsored by the Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University at Bloomington.
Japanese Old Photographs in Bakumatsu-Meiji Period
Collection of more than 5000 digitized photographs from the collection of Nagasaki University.
John Freeman Collection (Harvard University)
Nearly 750 photographs of northeast China and Manchuria taken by John Freeman in the 1930s.
Joseph Berry Keenan Visual Materials Collection (Harvard University)
Personal photographs taken 1945-1947 by Joseph Berry Keenan, Chief of Council and Chief of Section of the International Prosecution Section during the Japanese War Crimes Trial. "Mostly personal in nature, the represented subjects include Keenan himself, military ceremonies and figures in Japan . . . banquets and celebrations, views of Japanese people and scenery, and aerial views of the Japanese landscape following the atomic bomb drops of 1945."
Ling Long Women's Magazine (Columbia University)
1930s magazine published in Shanghai.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston: Russo-Japanese War
Images of the Russo-Japanese War from the MFA's collections.
The Non-Christian Peoples of the Philippine Islands
Article with numerous photos. By Dean C. Worcester, National Geographic, November 1913, vol. 27, no. 11. From Google Books.
Ohara Institute for Social Research Poster Exhibition
Collection of 400 digitized posters from the post-WWII Japanese labor movement.
Perry Visits Japan: A Visual History (Brown University)
A Japanese scroll that illustrates Commodore Matthew Perry's 1854 landing in Japan, the first official contact between Americans and Japanese, lithographs by the official artist of the Perry expedition, and student writings about these images.
Picturing Power: Posters of the Cultural Revolution
Features Cultural Revolution posters from the University of Westminster Centre for the Study of Democracy, U.K. Part of a traveling exhibition organized by the Indiana University School of Fine Arts Gallery and East Asian Studies Center in collaboration with the University of Westminster and shown at The Ohio State University in 1999.
Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures (National Diet Library)
Photographs and biographical sketches of 350 statesmen, government officials, military officers, businessmen, scholars and artists. In English and Japanese.
Red-Haired Barbarians: The Dutch and Other Foreigners in Nagasaki and Yokohama, 1800-1865
A digital exhibition of a collection of 40 Japanese woodblock prints published between 1800 and 1865, depicting Dutch traders in Nagasaki. From the International Institute of Social History in the Netherlands.
Rev. Claude L. Pickens,Jr. Collection on Muslims in China (Harvard University)
Over 1000 photos of Muslims and Christian missionaries working among them in Western China in the 1920s and 1930s.
Shanghai Modern, A Photographic Essay
A selection of photographs from Shanghai taken by New York-based photographer Lois Conner since 1984. From China Heritage Quarterly, China Heritage Project, The Australian National University. See also:
http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/features.php?searchterm=008_conner.inc&issue=008
Sidney D. Gamble Photographs (Duke University)
Photographs of Korea, Japan, Hawaii, San Francisco, and Russia taken between 1917 and 1932 by sociologist Sidney Gamble. Photographs depict urban and rural life, public events, architecture, religious statuary, and the countryside.
SouthEast Asian Images & Texts (University of Wisconsin)
Thousands of historic photographs of the Philippines and Laos.
The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures (Library of Congress)
Sixty-eight motion pictures produced between 1898 and 1901 of the Spanish-American War and the subsequent Philippine-American War. The films were made by the Edison Manufacturing Company and the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company and consist of actualities filmed in the U.S., Cuba, and the Philippines, showing troops, ships, notable figures, and parades, as well as reenactments of battles and other war-time events.
Visual Resources for Japan (Duke University)
List of over 90 links to online images of Japan gathered by Duke University Libraries.
Women's Magazines from the Republican Period at the Institute of Chinese Studies
Covers 1911-1941. Hosted by Institut für Sinologie, Heidelberg University.
World's Transportation Commission Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)
Nearly 900 images by American photographer William Henry Jackson. In addition to railroads, elephants, camels, horses, sleds and sleighs, sedan chairs, rickshaws, and other types of transportation, Jackson photographed city views, street and harbor scenes, landscapes, local inhabitants, and Commission members as they traveled through North Africa, Asia, Australia, and Oceania.
Old Manilla images in Flickr

Public Collections on the Internet

Corbus Images
Stock Photography, including creative, archival and documentary photographs. Search Asian women in advertisements as a sample of the wide variation covered by Corbis.
Corbus Motion
Moving images, including contemporary and archival footage. Search Asian women performance for a sample.
Flickr
Communities have formed around specific themes in Flickr. Search terms could include "stereotype, stereotyping, colonialism, Asian, etc.
Google Books
This is useful for students looking for advertisements from the 1950's through the 1970's in Life Magazine and others.
Google Videos
Library of Congress American Memory
More than 7 million sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience drawn from more than 100 collections
Magnum Photo Archive
Large and diverse collection of photography, including major photographers and photojournalists active throughout the 20th century.
New York Pulic Library Gallery
650,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities--illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, fashion plates, and other printed ephemera

Subject Guide

Kai Alexis Smith

She/ Her

Contact:

kaias@mit.edu
Room 7-238
617.258.5593

How can Kai help you?

Handouts

ARTstor Terms and Conditions of Use
Using DOME
Basic and Advanced Searching Tips, Viewing the Metadata Associated with Images, Downloading Images
Tips for Finding Images Online
Handout corresponds to workshops on visual literacy conducted by the Rotch Visual Collections staff
Visual Literacy Exercises

21F.027J/21H.250J: Asia in the Modern World: Images and Representations: Find Images