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All photographs of women with bound feet have stories behind them. An unbound bound foot was a taboo, to only be seen by one's female relatives and husband. Many women displaying their naked deformed feet to the photographers look uncomfortable with what they are doing. This girl was photographed by a man named James Ricalton in around 1900, in a hotel in Shanghai. She did not want to have her feet photographed, but her mother was there to make sure nothing happened, and they were paid four silver dollars for her trouble. If she knew that her photograph would be widely used on the internet one hundred years later, that she would be known by thousands of internet voyeurs as just a pair of feet, would she have agreed?  Several more photographs of her can be found on the internet, in this Flickr gallery.    
Ricalton.org - A website about the photographer. Back to footbinding article... Back to Writing page... Back to website... Victoria Smith (cc) 2010 - Some Rights Reserved |