In the summer of 1986, Patrick Dransfield was residing with a Chinese professor and his 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. 

The over 100 rolls of negatives, comprising 800+ photographs, languished in a shoe box in his family home until 2020.  This ‘trove of lost photographs’, featured in the Financial Times ‘HTSI’ magazine in October 2022, setting off world-wide interest.

In the talk, Patrick traces his observations as a young but enthusiastic photographer, and offers a fascinating portrait of a way of life that has since immeasurably changed.  He also shares his thoughts on art history and photography in the context of these unique images of a China in transition.

Patrick Dransfield is a photographer, author, public speaker and historian.  He hails from the United Kingdom and read English and History of Art at the University of Leeds.  He also holds a Masters in Chinese History from University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), inspired by the diaries of his father, who was a young Officer in the Royal Navy visiting Hong Kong 1945-6. 

Patrick is the author of audio book “Duel of the Sorcerers” and "Track of Time: Moments of Transition", a book based on the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club Exhibition of his ‘Old Beijing’ photographs.  After nearly three decades in Hong Kong, Patrick now resides in Abu Dhabi.