Yi Liu’s research primarily explores the intersections of photography, politics, and identity within 20th and 21st-century Chinese visual culture. She is particularly interested in how photography, rooted in Western technological and aesthetic paradigms, has been adapted and reinterpreted within China’s unique modern trajectory, focusing on its role in shaping epistemology, nationalism, and propaganda. Her book project, Making Modern China in Photobooks: Contested National Narratives in the Photographic Archives of China, 1900s-1950s, investigates photobooks produced in mainland China that rely on photographs, rather than text, to present a comprehensive understanding of China as a modern nation-state. This research offers the first systematic academic examination of these invaluable yet understudied pictorial records by situating the creation of photobooks within the broader contexts of intellectual history, printing technology, and publishing culture in modern East Asia.
刘一的研究主要探讨二十世纪与二十一世纪中国视觉文化中摄影、政治与身份认同之间的交汇关系。她尤其关注摄影这一根植于西方技术与美学范式的媒介，如何在中国独特的现代化进程中被吸收、改造并重新阐释。她的研究重点考察摄影在中国与现代知识体系、民族主义与宣传机制的作用。她的书稿项目《摄影书中的现代中国：1900至1950年代中国摄影档案中的国家叙事之争》研究了中国大陆出版的百科全书式摄影书。这些摄影书依靠图像而非文字，建构了中国作为一个现代民族国家的整体认识。本研究将摄影书的生成置于现代东亚思想史、印刷技术与出版文化的脉络之中，首次对这些珍贵却长期研究不足的图像文献进行了系统性的学术研究。