This Camel Traffic Jam in Beijing in the 1920s is just one of the many great photographs by Sidney D. Gamble recently put online by the Duke University Archive of Documentary Arts.

Without the Internet, many of us probably would never have seen Gamble’s great work.

Details on the man:

From 1908 to 1932, Sidney Gamble (1890-1968) visited China four times, traveling throughout the country to collect data for social-economic surveys and to photograph urban and rural life, public events, architecture, religious statuary, and the countryside. A sociologist, renowned China scholar, and avid amateur photographer, Gamble used some of the pictures to illustrate his monographs. The Sidney D. Gamble Photographs digital collection marks the first comprehensive public presentation of this large body of work that includes photographs of Korea, Japan, Hawaii, San Francisco, and Russia. The site currently features photographs dated between 1917 and 1932; the 1908 photographs will be digitized and uploaded as part of future additions to the site.

My posting of this image – in the interests of teaching about old Beijing and research about China’s history – hopefully does not breach the complex phrasing of copyright on the images.

Hat tip to James Fallows