Qiuzi Guo

Qiuzi Guo is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max Planck Institute) under the 4A Laboratory: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics programme (July 2021–July 2022). She holds a Ph.D in East Asian Art History from Heidelberg University (2019), where her dissertation examined how early Chinese amateur photographers contributed to visual modernity by adapting Euro-American artistic idioms to local contexts.

Her research focuses on Art History and Chinese Photography, particularly the interplay between Western scientific visual paradigms and indigenous Chinese aesthetics. She investigates Visual Realism in 1920s–1930s China, analyzing how photographers negotiated optical experiences across Western and non-Western frameworks, and its implications for cultural heritage digitalization.

Her work includes a publication titled The Shadow of Trees: Photography and Visual Realism in 1920s and 1930s China, which examines photographic representations of trees and mid-20th-century photo manuals to understand visual modernity. This project forms part of the 4A_Lab Research Programme, a collaboration between the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.