DONALD MENNIE

CHINA NORTH & SOUTH

A Series of Vandyk Photogravures Illustrating the Picturesque Aspect of Chinese Life and Surroundings

Published by A. S. Watson & Co.

Shanghai (The Shaghai Pharmacy Ltd.)

Second & Revised Edition

1920

Cord bound album with stiff card covers with black lettering and photo pasted on the front.Undated, though 1920s. Title page and 30 leaves each with a tipped on Vandyk photogravure  with printed captions. Some spliting along the sides of the spine back strip, and an inch missing from the lower spine, all holding together well enough. Contents and photgravures all very good.

Donald Mennie (1875/1876 - 1941) was a Scottish bussinessman and amateur photographer. He arrived in Beijing in 1899; how and why is unfortunately unknown. What is known, is that he first worked as an assistant in the firm of Mactavish & Lehman & Co in Beijing. After this, he joined the company of A.S. Watson & Co in Shanghai and eventually became the firm's managing director.

In his photographs Mennie seemed to have tried to capture a romantic vision of 'antique China', featuring dusty caravans of horses or camels, old palaces and authentic street scenes, all in and around Beijing. Between 1914 and 1927 he published several books covering his photographic work, including The Pageant of Peking (1920), Glimpses of China (1920), China, North and South (1922) and The Grandeur of the Gorges (1926). By these publications his work became better known and after 1900 he became proposed as a member of the Royal Geographic Society and Pictures of Peking.

Mennie spent the last year of his life in a Lunghua camp in Shanghai, where he was interned by the Japanese military in March 1943. He passed away on the 10th of January 1944.