An old photo of Hangzhou. [Photo provided to China Daily by Shen Hong]

Sidney Gamble worked as a research secretary for the Beijing YMCA, conducting socio-economic surveys, helping establish community-service programs and teaching sociology in China.

The negatives of his photos were found by his daughter, Catherine Curran, after his death in 1968. They were carefully placed in paper sheaths, annotated with captions and stored in rosewood boxes in the family's home in New York. They've been digitized and stored in a Duke University library since 2006.

In 2008, Shen contacted Duke University as he was then writing a seminar paper on Sidney Gamble's Hangzhou photos. That led to the publication of the photo book in 2010.