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Milton Miller

Attributed Milton Miller
Chinese Students
1872
Albumen print
22 cm x 29 cm

Milton Miller
Merchants
c.1860
Albumen print, stereoview
17 cm x 9 cm

Milton Miller
General’s Wife
1864
Albumen print
29 x 22 cm

Milton Miller’s photographs of Chinese models are among the finest artistic portraits in early photography of China. This imposing elderly woman wears an elaborately embroidered silk robe with a matching vest and skirt – the ceremonial garb of the wife of a Qing official. She gazes forward directly at the camera establishing a powerful connection with the viewer. “The sense of visual immediacy and the woman’s individualized appearance reconfirm the picture’s identity as a portrait and explain why this and similar images by Miller have been praised as ‘the most significant body of nineteenth-century Chinese official portraits’” (Wu Hung).

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