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Loewentheil's exhaustive photo archive shines a new light on life in 19th-century China. Scroll through to see more images from his collection.The Loewentheil Collection of China Photography.
A number of the photos in Loewentheil's collection were taken by unidentified artists.
The 15,000-strong photo collection features everyday Chinese tradespeople from the time, like this weaver.
After foreigners introduced cameras to China, pioneering figures like Lai Afong produced portraits, landscapes and cityscapes that were, in Loewentheil's eyes, equal in quality to those being produced in the West.
Like many of the early Western photographers, Thomas Child sold his photos to magazines and book publishers.
Like in the West, Chinese public figures would often have their portraits taken at a photography studio. This image shows the influential politician and general Li Hongzhang.
Photography spread throughout China in the latter half of the 19th century, leading to the creation of commercial studios specializing in portraits.
Studio portraits were often hand-painted by artists after being developed.
The images in Loewentheil's collection often document the architecture of buildings since damaged or destroyed.
Scottish photographer John Thompson's view of downtown Hong Kong is virtually unrecognizable from today's mass of skyscrapers.
A panoramic view of Beijing's city walls, almost all of which have since been destroyed.
Scottish photographer John Thompson's journey up the Min River offered people in the West a rare look into the country's remote interior.
Thomas Child's pictures of Beijing's Summer Palace, which was subsequently burned down by Anglo-French forces, offer an invaluable record of its lost architecture.
A street scene in Shanghai. Street photography proved especially challenging at the time, as the unavoidably long exposures often resulted in blurring.
Englishman Thomas Child was an engineer stationed in Beijing (then Peking) for almost two decades. He often documented the intricacies of China's traditional architecture, although he also turned his lens toward human subjects.
A studio shot by American photographer Milton Miller, who captured life in Hong Kong and Guangzhou (then Canton) in the early 1860s.
