Joseph F. Rock Collection

View historic photographs of China taken by explorer Joseph Francis Charles Rock.
Joseph Rock (fifth from left) and Naxi assistants near the summit of Ha-ta-pan in the East Koko Nor Barrier Range
Harvard-Yenching Library

Joseph Francis Charles Rock (1884 – 1962) was an Austrian-American explorer, botanist, and anthropologist. For more than 25 years, he travelled extensively through Tibet 西藏  and Yunnan 云南 , Gansu 甘肃, and Szechuan 四川 provinces in China before finally leaving in 1949. Nearly 1200 of his historic photographs in Harvard's collection, mostly kept at Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library and Harvard-Yenching Library, have been digitized and can be viewed online. 

Accessing These Materials

Photos in the Harvard-Yenching Library's Joseph Rock Collection can be viewed online