David Odo, The Journey of "A Good Type": From Artistry to Ethnography in Early Japanese Photographs; foreword by Elizabeth Edwards (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press, Harvard University, 2015) xviii, 125 pp. ISBN 978087365408.

Contents: Illustrations; Foreword: What photographs "do" in museums / by Elizabeth Edwards; Preface ; Introduction; 1. A valuable collection. The collectors; 2. Visual journeys. Souvenir photography in Japan ; A journey through "Old Japan"; Beneath the surface; 3. Vanishing types. The vanishing type; Photographing the type; Anthropometric photographs; "Historic boards" in the Peabody Museum; Scientific type photography in Japan; 4. Visual salvage. Salvaging Japan; Museums and visual salvage; Native types; 5. Visualizing the future.

Carmen Pérez González, From Istanbul to Yokohama: the Camera Meets Asia 1839-1900=Von Istanbul bis Yokohama: die Reise der Kamera nach Asien 1839-1900 (Köln: Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2014) 302 pp. ISBN 9783863355623. Exhibition catalog of 19th century Asia photos collected by Adolf Fischer. Parallel texts in English and German.

Essays include “A Mirror with Memory: the Daguerrotype Camera Heads East;” “The Globetrotter Market: the Development of Commercial Photography in Asia 1869-1900;” “Comparative Photo-chronology of [the] 19th Century in Asia.”

Zartrosa und Lichtblau : japanische Fotografie der Meiji-Zeit, 1868-1912 / [für die Kunstbibliothek - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin herausgegeben von Christine Kühn] (Berlin: Kunstbibliothek-Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Bielefeld: Kerber, c2015).319 pp. ISBN 9783735600486. Exhibition catalog.

Martin Paar and WassinkLundgren, ed., The Chinese Photobook: From the 1900s to the Present; texts by Gu Zheng, Raymond Lum, Ruben Lundgren, Stephanie H. Tung, and Gerry Badger (New York : Aperture, 2015) 447 pp. ISBN 9781597112284.

From the book jacket:

"The Chinese Photobook: From the 1900s to the Present offers an introduction to the richness and diversity of photobooks published about China, including key titles by established and emerging contemporary Chinese photographers published in recent years; books created by early colonial powers in China, including France, Germany, and Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War; and a selection of books produced during the first years of New China and the Cultural Revolution, among many others. Over the last decade there has been a major reappraisal of the role and status of the photobook within the history of photography. These revisionist histories have added enormously to our reading and understanding of the culture of photography, particularly in places that are often marginalized, such as Latin America and South Africa. However, until now, only a few Chinese photobooks have made it onto historians’ short lists. Yet China has a fascinating history of publishing photography—including publications produced by the Chinese state as well as those that offer an external perspective, by some of the world’s greatest photographers. Here, over 250 volumes, drawn primarily from Martin Parr’s peer-less collection of photobooks, are contextualized by an international team of scholars and historians: Gu Zheng, Raymond Lum, Ruben Lundgren, Stephanie H. Tung, and Gerry Badger. Their painstaking research into each of the featured books unveils a complex, multifaceted perspective of China, revealing much about the country and the dramatic twists and turns of its history over the last century."

Sean Willcock, “Aesthetic Bodies: Posing on Sites of Violence in India, 1857–1900,” History of Photography, vol. 39, issue 2, 2015, pp. 142-159.

History of Photography, Special Issue: American Photography in the Asia Pacific, ed. by Prue Ahrens, vol. 39, issue 3, 2015. Articles include “The Famous Iwo Flag-Raising: Iwo Jima Revisited,” by Melissa Renn; “American Photography During the Allied Occupation of Japan: The Work of John W. Bennett,” by Morris Low; “Capturing Japan: Australian Photography of the Postwar Military Occupation,” by Robin Gerster; “Dean Worcester’s Fantasy Islands: Photography, Film, and the Colonial Philippines,” by Eleanor M. Hight.

Shashin: Photography from Japan, Aperture Magazine #219, Spring 2015, The Tokyo Issue. Published in conjunction with the festival of the same name, held in New York. The Festival “...is a multi-institution program aimed to raise awareness of photography from Japan in New York, foster an exchange, and stimulate discussion in multiple segments [source: photographyfromjapan.com].”

The PhotoBook Review #008, Spring 2015 (New York: Aperture). Features “Collecting the Japanese Photobook: Conversations with Rykuichi Kaneko and Ivan Vartanian” and “Collecting the Japanese Photobook, Part Two: Conversations with Manfred Heiiting and Lesley A. Martin.”

Patricia Chiu & Edward Stokes, Lee Fook Chee’s Hong Kong: Photographs from the 1950s=流光迅影香港情 一九五0年代李福志攝影作品 (Hong Kong: The Photographic Heritage Foundation; The Commercial Press, 2015), xii, 204 p. ISBN 9789620756573. Lee (d. 2012), at various periods a professional photographer, ice-cream hawker, seller of his prints on The Peak in Hong Kong, was encountered by Edward Stokes quite by chance as Lee was selling individual photo prints. His trove of negatives still existed in his cramped Hong Kong apartment when Stokes visited. Their collaboration resulted in this book, the 5th in the Photographic Heritage Foundation Series. The bulk of published photographs of Hong Kong date from the romantic early period of Hong Kong as a British colony and from the immediate post-WWII era (Hedda Morrison’s photos, also published by The Photogaphic Heritage Foundation). The value of Lee’s photos is their depiction of a time in Hong Kong when there was little interest in photo documentation of a place that was rapidly changing. Street life, Victoria Harbor, and a now-vanished architectural heritage all feature in Lee’s photos.