Sociologist, renowned China scholar, and amateur photographer Sidney D. Gamble (1890-1968) visited China four times between 1908 and 1932 to collect data for socio-economic surveys, and to photograph urban and rural life, public events, architecture, religious statuary, and the countryside. The Sidney D. Gamble collection consists primarily of contact sheets, hand-colored glass slides, 35mm duplicate slides, contact prints, negatives, and other photographic formats documenting Gamble's four visits to China from 1908 to 1932. In total, there are over 5,000 unique images in the collection depicting urban and rural life, economic conditions, public events, agriculture, religious statuary, architecture, and the countryside. In addition to photographs of China, the collection contains a handful of images captured by Gamble from Japan and Korea and images captured by David Gamble in the western United States, circa 1906. Also included are artifacts, audiovisual materials including moving images captured by Gamble in China from 1926 to 1933, scrapbooks, a small selection of Gamble's personal papers, and records of the Sidney D. Gamble Foundation for China Studies relating to the exhibition of Gamble's photographs in China and the United States, 1980s-2000s. Acquired as part of the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University.
