- Deep/3D image-object or artefact
- Surface-area (space to be measured/bounded/qualified)
- Physical/Material Landscape (to be situated/located/occupied/described/qualified/measured/numbered)
- Production/Process of Making images and artefacts by various actors engaged in complex relationships and networks
- Precise census & measuring
- Rigorous typology & classification
- Precise description of physical attributes
- Geographical mapping of physical places (points), zones (areas), frontiers (lines) and dynamics (arrows)
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Distorted vision of images
-
Flat/2D image (image-representation)
- Surface-Mirror (Pang's "distorting mirror" 2008)
- Mental Landscape (Mittler's mindmaps/mindsets 2013)
- Focus on consumption/consumers and their assumed desires/imaginaries (despite the lack of material evidence)
-
Deceiving lenses, unsatisfying methods and instruments
- Numerical Approximations
- Vague inventory and imprecise description
- Fleating localization and cultural mapping
-
Narrow scope of questions/problems
- China/West, Nationalism/Imperialism (Dikötter, Fraser, Gerth) & postcolonial approaches (MGAW)
- Relationships between Nation-State/Family/Individual & social-political approaches (Tsai 2010)
- Women/Gender approaches (MGAW, Mittler, Pang, etc.)
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Limited set of materials
-
Press
- Daily Newspapers (Büschel, Mittler)
- Periodicals, mostly illustrated magazines (Liangyou) (Pickowicz 2013, Yan 2012)
- Calendar Posters (Laing 2004)
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Narrow range of product-oriented monographies
- Medicines (Cochran 2004, 2006; Lean 1995)
- Cigarette (Büchel, Cochran 1980, Pedelty 2012)
- Cosmetics (MGAW)
- The two most represented products in advertising spaces at the time: a major documentary bias, revealing the neglect of such basic rule in historical practice as external/critical analysis of available materials (to discriminate what is present from what is missing in the corpora)