Donald Mennie
Donald Mennie (9 March 1875[1] – 10 January 1944)[2] was a Scottish businessman and amateur photographer who worked in early twentieth century China.
Mennie was born in
eventually becoming the firm's managing director.In 1921 Mennie made a trip to England listing his contact as his subordinate the Director at Watson & Co Mr Chisolm, this suggesting he was unmarried. By 1934 Watson & Co was listed as 'Wholesale & Retail Chemists, Druggists, & wine, spirit, & cigar merchants; Dealer in all kinds of photographic chemicals & apparatus'. From 1920 until his death in 1941, Mennie was a very powerful entrepreneur in coastal China.[7] Donald Mennie died in Shanghai in January 1944 aged 69/70. Lungwha camp historian Greg Leck reported that Mennie's name appears on a list of British internees in Shanghai, with a Lunghwa Camp number and "Lunghwa" next to his name.
Mennie’s first known work as a photographer were the illustrations in duotone to Elizabeth Cooper’s 'My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard', a story of women's lives in China published in New York in 1914 which went into a number of reprints. He evidently began extensive travels in these years and went on to publish his own photobooks beginning in 1920 with a soft cover and relatively modest album of 30 vandyke photogravures China by Land & Water published by A.S Watson and Co.
As a photographer, Mennie probably used the
He died in a Shanghai sanatorium in 1944.[11]
Notes
- ^ "1875 MENNIE, DONALD (Statutory registers Births 051/ 10)". Scotland's People. National Records of Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon.
- ^ Worswick and Spence, 150.
- ^ California, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1959
- ^ Scotland, National Probate Index (Calendar of Confirmations and Inventories), 1876-1936
- ^ Worswick and Spence state that Mennie "appeared in China in 1899" (p. 146), Hahn states that Mennie "resided in China between 1891 and 1941".
- ^ Worswick and Spence, 146; Hahn. A.S. Watson & Co. were chemists, druggists, and wine and liquor merchants.
- ^ Worswick and Spence, 146. Coastal China was notably the location of the principal treaty ports.
- ^ Hahn.
- ^ Worswick and Spence, 146.
- ^ Worswick and Spence, 124, 146, 150; Hahn.
- ^ UK, WWII Civilian Deaths, 1939-1945
References
- A.S. Watson & Co., Ltd. A.S. Watson Group; Corporate. Accessed 28 October 2009.
- Hahn, Thomas. Bibliography of Photo-albums and Materials related to Photography in China and Tibet before 1949. Accessed 28 October 2009.
- Ho, Eliza. Sha Fei’s Revisions of the Great Wall in Chinese Wartime Photography Archived 2009-07-05 at the Wayback Machine, abstract of a paper delivered at the workshop, 'The Role of Photography in Shaping China’s Image, 1860-1945', Northwestern University, 24–25 April 2009. Accessed 26 October 2009.
- National Gallery of Australia, Collection, s.v. "Mennie, Donald", "The Grandeur of the Gorges.". Accessed 26 October 2009.
- National Gallery of Australia, Collection, s.v. "Mennie, Donald", "The Pageant of Peking". Accessed 26 October 2009.
- Union List of Artist Names, s.v. "Mennie, Donald". Accessed 26 October 2009.
- Worswick, Clark, and Jonathan Spence. Imperial China: Photographs, 1850-1912 (New York: Pennwick Publishing, 1978). ISBN 0-517-53377-4
External links
- Donald Mennie collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (Photographic History collection)
