Travels of a photographer in China, 1933-1946

Hedda Morrison's A Photographer in Old Peking, published last year, offered an incomparable visual record of a vanished city: Peking as it was in the 1930s and '40s. Library Journal called it "remarkable...an unusual and valuable book about pre-1949 China." A fitting sequel to that volume, this book collects more of Morrison's photographs from China during the same period; in this case, her subject is the China beyond Peking's boundaries. Morrison's travels took her such places as Yun Kang, one of the most important Buddhist sites; Jehol, the old Imperial summer seat whose edifices were built by the Emperor Kang Hsi; Hua Shan, the awesome mountain sacred to Taoists; the Shantung coast, where houses were built of stone (unlike anywhere else in China); and Nanking, a city rich in history and culture in the lush lower Yangtze valley. Ranging from portraits to architectural studies to images of landscapes, the 230 photographs collected here display the same keenness of observation and sympathy for their subjects that were so in evidence in the earlier book.