‘A Young Photographer in Old Beijing’– an in-person talk with pictures

In the Summer of 1986, Patrick was living with an old Chinese Professor of Chemistry and his artist wife in north Beijing. He’d acquired a second-hand twin periscope Seagull camera and proceeded to record the street scenes he encountered on his long cycle rides between Peking University and the Newsweek office in west Beijing.

Patrick will share highlights from the 800+ archive; his thoughts on art and also doing business with Chinese people in the context of these unique images of a China in transition.

“We are all the luckier for seeing these pictures through the deeply empathetic lens that Patrick M Dransfield brought to Beijing in 1986.” Professor Rana Mitter OBE FBA, ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Patrick M Dransfield remembers first experiencing ‘wanderlust’ when, at the age of six, his father, Philip Brook Dransfield, read the diaries recorded when Philip was a young petty officer in the Royal Navy visiting China, Japan, Australia and the Dutch East Indies in 1945-6. The worlds of travel and eastern philosophies continue to fascinate – along with Patrick’s profound wish to escape the mundane through Art.

Patrick majored in English and History of Art at Leeds University and holds a Masters degree in Chinese History, Politics and Anthropology from SOAS, University of London. He is the author of ‘The Inner Circle Wu Xing’ series of novels and also "Track of Time: Moments of Transition". a book based on the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club Wall Exhibition of his ‘Old Beijing’ photographs of October 2020.

Host or Publisher SOAS Library