Set in Stone

Abstract

The Great Wall(s) of China have been imagined, re-imagined, analysed and re-visited through a variety of media, including written records, visual materials, and literature. The various myths and cultural attachments to the Wall have even coalesced in an interest-based field referred to as Great Wall studies (Waldron 1995, Luo Zhewen 2006, Cheng Dalin 2006, Barmé 2005, Lindesay 2008). A backward-looking gaze at the history of the wall has compelled historians, writers, architects, geographers, and photographers to take on the construction, deterioration, and preservation of it to create a definition of China that serves both Chinese national and foreign interests. The recently recovered archive of the American Great Wall enthusiast William Edgar Geil (1865-1924), housed in a local historical society in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, USA, contains many photographs that add to our understanding of the role of the Wall as artefact, image, and even fetish. Geil’s archive captures contemporary Great Wall tensions among amateur/ scholar, photographer/preservationist, and national/international identities.