Basically what the title says.
Ive been trying to look up Photographs of late Qing Emperors when I began to notice this. In fact of all I managed to find it seems only Puyi was the sole one ever photographed and its interesting that most Photos of him were taken before and after he was the last reigning Qing Monarch.
Was there a rule in the Qing era against photographing an Emperor? Seems kinda odd considering how Emperors tend to pose for portraits.
So, to be rather pedantic, there are photos of one emperor who reigned in the 19th century, albeit taken in the 20th: a French photographer for the periodical L'Illustration snapped the Guangxu Emperor disembarking from a sedan chair in 1908, the year before the emperor's death – you can see this photo on page 21 of this PDF scan of the relevant publication. Now, this photo was taken somewhat illicitly by what seems to have been a prototype paparazzo, so obviously wasn't a commissioned photographic portrait. Yet as you may be aware, a substantial number of Qing nobles and officials were photographed – Zuo Zongtang, Prince Gong, and Dowager Empress Cixi, to name a few; even the Guangxu Emperor's consorts, Zhen and Jin, were photographed. So why not the emperor himself?
This is something with no firm explanation: simply put, people tend to give more reasons for the few things they do, than the many things they don't. However, if we look at the history of Qing imperial portraiture, that of Qing court photography, and that of Qing coup attempts, we do get a few ideas as to why the Guangxu Emperor in particular seems to have gone unphotographed.
Imperial portraiture was always slightly symbolic, and never intended to depict the exact, actual appearance of the emperor at a given time. The face was left mostly unchanged, but otherwise emperors were generally shown in peak bodily health and sometimes in exaggerated stature relative to their surroundings. Moreover, these portraits were primarily for use within the imperial clan, and especially the emperor himself; the image of the monarch was not really something for mass distribution in a way comparable to European monarchies. Photographs, then, didn't necessarily fulfil the functions that painted portraits did, at least not any better: they couldn't (yet) be 'brushed up' to emphasise the idealised self-image of the emperor, and their arguably greater reproducibility wasn't a particular draw either.
More importantly, perhaps, is the simple fact that photographs of imperial family members were generally taken at those people's behest. With the exception of Felix Beato's 1860 photograph of Prince Gong (which took place during the negotiations for the Convention of Peking that ended the Second Opium War), the photographs we have of Princes Gong and Chun were taken without significant duress – indeed, Prince Chun, the Guangxu Emperor's father, was particularly photogenic and made a point to pose in casual dress for several photographic portraits, taken principally by Liang Shitai (also known as Seetay). Consort Zhen seems, herself, to have had an interest in photography that led to her being photographed at some point in the late 1890s. The Dowager Empress Cixi's photographic portraits, taken between 1903 and 1904 by a Manchu photographer named Xunling need to be understood in a particular context, as the Qing re-established relations with the foreign powers after the 1900 Boxer Uprising. This period saw suggestions that Cixi embrace Western-style depictions of herself, suggestions she decided to heed, leading to oil portraits by Katharine Karl in 1904 and Hubert Vos in 1905, as well as the photographs taken by Xunling.
By the time that Xunling was photographing Cixi, though, the Guangxu Emperor was not exactly in a position of substantial power. Indeed, he had been effectively deposed in a coup in 1898 and placed under house arrest, with his contact with the outside world kept to a minimum. It is unlikely that Cixi, who deposed him, would have been interested in sending over her court photographer to take a few shots, nor would she have been particularly keen on permitting close contact with a foreign photographer either. Of course, the Guangxu Emperor did hold power before the coup, having reached a reasonable age of majority in 1889 (when he turned 18), but at this stage his father's photographer, Seetay, seems to have ceased activity, so unless he was particularly interested in getting his photograph taken – which, as noted above, was far from a guarantee – there wasn't anyone around able to take one whenever.
In short, portrait photographs are the sort of thing you want to get taken, and during the nine years he was actually ruling, the Guangxu Emperor just didn't really bother getting a photograph done. And by the time there was a decently active court photographer, he was living under house arrest so it didn't really matter what he wanted.
Ying-Chen Peng, 'Lingering Between Tradition and Innovation: Photographic Portraits of Empress Dowager Cixi.' Ars Orientalis 43 (2013)
Claire Roberts, 'The Empress Dowager's Birthday: The Photographs of Cixi's Long Life Without End.' Ars Orientalis 43 (2013)
Yi Gu, 'Prince Chun Through the Lens: Negotiating the Photographic Medium in Royal Images.' Ars Orientalis 43 (2013)
This was a question I didn't know I wanted the answer to. What a great question and answer
