As the closing event for the exhibition Intimate Size, Ge Hengli, founder of the HLiiC Center, will present his lecture The Origin of Early Imaging: From Silhouettes to Photography for enthusiasts in Shanghai—a key part of the exhibition program. His research into the history of photographic processes guides us back to the “pre-photographic era.” This lecture meaningfully echoes the exhibition’s classical handmade prints, together exploring the diverse possibilities of photography’s physical scale and visual expression.
The silhouette, a once-popular portrait art, shared photography’s fundamental desire to capture the human form. The lecture revisited this 18th-century European craft, revealing how the aesthetic and technical origins of modern photography were seeded in these early experiments—providing crucial historical context for understanding the contemporary works on display.
From silhouettes to silver-based and digital processes, our core impulse to know ourselves, preserve memory, and express a way of seeing through images remains. Today, revisiting this manual, slow imaging leads us to reflect on the essence of the image, the intent of creation, and the depth contained within a frame—a “framed” frame—and how that very frame should not confine our perception.
Lecturer: Hengli Ge
Founder of HLiiC (Hengli Image Center); Research Fellow at the Archaic Imaging Academy; Daguerreotypist; Member of the Daguerreian Society (U.S.); Industry Mentor and MFA Advisor in Photography at the Nanjing University of the Arts; and Consultant to the Lishui International Center for Classical Photographic Processes.
Ge is dedicated to the research and practice of early imaging technologies and archaic photographic processes. He has curated and directed nearly a hundred exhibitions and symposiums centered on photographic history and image-making techniques, collaborating extensively with international artists, art institutions, and cultural organizations.
About HLiiC
Established in Nanjing in 2020, HLiiC is dedicated to the research and practice of 19th century handmade photography. HLiiC·Lab provides visualized and personalized custom printing and output services, realizing the transformation from digital images to physical photos of the 19th century, to explore another possibility of image.
Since 2023, HLiiC launched a public education initiative, the Academy of Archaic Imaging (A.A.I), focusing on the efforts made by humankind to faithfully record the visible world, during the twenty-year period surrounding photography’s birth in 1839. A.A.I is devoted to providing resources for understanding the history of the application of technology to depict “what is seen”, through documents and practical materials.
