“Lens onto the World: Optical Devices, Art, Science, and Society in China” is a book project that combines cross-cultural histories of art and science to reintegrate the Chinese visual and material culture surrounding premodern optical devices, which led to the modern study of optics and encouraged new image-making technologies like photography. European optical devices were domesticated almost immediately upon their arrival in China around 1600, and became part of Chinese art, visual culture, material culture, entertainment—often more than science and technology—until the mid-19th century. This matters not simply because Chinese optical devices are little studied in any field, but because both the devices and their sociocultural effects can only be understood through the works of art and visual culture that were created and used alongside them. 

“Lens onto the World” treats Chinese optical devices and their related works of art as equal partners, which when studied together reveal that the effects of optical devices on vision and visuality arose as much from local culture and social class as from foreign ideas. Since the devices were rarely introduced in a scientific context outside the imperial court, the consequences of domestic production, local creativity, and widespread use embedded them more deeply into Chinese culture than previously acknowledged. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that combines histories of art and science reveals the depth and breadth of Chinese optical devices’ relationship with art and visual culture during the last dynasty.

Each chapter of “Lens onto the World” focuses on a pair of devices and associated works. The introduction, “Instrumentalized Looking,” establishes the argument that studying premodern Chinese optical devices together with their related works of art reveals deep, long-standing connections between vision, art, and visuality, the sociocultural elements of vision that inflect perception.

Chapter One, “Picturing Early Devices: Spectacles and Telescopes,” examines the two earliest devices to gain a solid foothold in China. Their intertwined histories reveal the impact of transparent lenses on all levels of late Ming and early Qing society during the 17th century. They further demonstrate how quickly that technology spread alongside new optical principles and conceptions of vision published in illustrated, woodblock-printed books.

Chapter Two, “Optical Entertainment: Peepbox and Optique,” focuses on devices made and used specifically for viewing prints and paintings. Street performers domesticated such viewing into a popular, public entertainment, while the Qianlong Emperor commissioned unique works and devices for his solo use. Who saw what through which devices therefore reflects changing internal conceptions of art and social class more than cross-cultural differences.

Chapter Three, “Projection and Representation: The Camera Obscura and Magic Lantern,” focuses on projection technologies to consider a new aspect of the relationship between visual culture and optical devices in the 19th century. As contact with the wider world began to increase exponentially in the modern era, how the science and technology linked to looking at images began to shift as well.

The epilogue follows premodern optical devices that persisted into the mid-20th century alongside photography and cinema, and the growth of European and North American science and science education. These continuations represent the changing visual economy of looking, representation, and truth that became entangled with China’s transformation into a modern nation.

Washington University in St. Louis
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow, spring 2026

Kristina Kleutghen will continue research and fieldwork for “Lens onto the World” with the support of a Howard Foundation Fellowship, before returning to her position as an endowed associate professor at Washington University in spring 2027. Her book Global Qing: Decorative Objects of the Eighteenth-Century Court is forthcoming from University of Washington Press in December 2026.