香蕉秀

I was most embarassed [sic] to hear that my file of 85,000 photos of pretty little girls and babies was going to your institute. I was not a critical photographer at the time. However in all that mess are photos of American Jesuits doing just about everything from 1951 to 1973. Some famous Chinese: old revolutionary and calligrapher Yu Yu Jen, Moslem general and politician Pai Ch’ung Hsi, old war lord Yen Hsi Shan, novelist Pa Chin, old sinologist deLaparent [sic], S.J. Of course the albums of old snaps are important but must be identified. I guess you must keep the chaff to get the grain. The negatives numbered to fit the contacts will be mailed from Taiwan soon.

This collection of photographic negatives and contact prints did indeed arrive at the Institute and accompanied its move to Boston College, where it now (2026) awaits digitization. Here, I will offer some general information about the collection, as can be judged by perusal of the contact prints, and about its originator.

The letter quoted above was clearly not the first that Foley and Malatesta had exchanged. Foley references a pamphlet that Malatesta had sent him and he inquires for information on the Ming-period Christian scholar Xu Guangqi’s potential mentions of the art of papermaking (apparently nineteenth-century French novelist Honoré de Balzac has a reference to Chinese papermaking, and Foley was trying to track down the source for an article). Foley also asks for the contact info for a few British academics, including sinologist Joseph Needham, and reports on a recent visit to Beijing and Shanghai, during which he was sadly sick for much of the time. He then outlines the various research projects he is hoping to pursue once he retires to Plymouth, Mass. (To my knowledge, the projects were mostly unrealized.) Foley ends the letter by remarking on his meager pension and asks Malatesta whether he could work for the Ricci Institute part time as a research assistant. Unfortunately, Malatesta’s answer to this query is not recorded.

Foley’s life

I do not know very much about Foley’s life. According to an article in a Boston-area newspaper, written on the occasion of an exhibition of Foley’s Taiwan photographs in 1964 (The Newton Graphic, May 14), Foley attended Fordham and Gonzaga Universities for his undergraduate studies. At some point, he entered the Society of Jesus. According to a pamphlet produced for another exhibition (Taiwan xiezhen sheying zhanlan?臺灣寫真攝影展覽), held in Taipei in 1960 under the auspices of the United States Information Service (Meiguo xinwen chu 美國新聞處), Foley arrived in China in 1946. A passing mention in the aforementioned letter to Malatesta makes clear that he studied at the theologate in Zikawei (Xujiahui) in Shanghai. Foley remained in China until 1951, at which point he moved to Taiwan with many of the other expelled China missionaries.

In Taipei, Foley taught English at National Taiwan University. At the same time, he was the local photographer and correspondent of?Jesuit Missions, a US publication. Shortly after the conclusion of the Taipei exhibition, Foley moved back to America to do an MA degree in English at Boston College. He appears to have received his PhD from Harvard in 1964. At that time, he was scheduled to return to Taiwan by way of Iraq. At some point (before 1985) Foley left the Society, for he married May Yang, who survived him (Foley’s obituary in the?Boston Globe, December 17, 2002).

In addition to a book with some of his Taiwan photographs (The Face of Taiwan: A Selection of Photo Studies, DS895.F7 F64 1959), Foley published?The Great Formosan Impostor?(CT9980.F60 1968) about the colorful character of George Psalmanazar (1679–1763). He also worked on a book with the title “They Came to Taiwan: Eyewitness Accounts of Taiwan, 1582 to 1882,” but to my knowledge, it never appeared. He made at least one documentary film,?Roddy, filmed in Jamaica in 1962, and at the very least planned to make another one in Iraq.

Foley’s photographs

At the time of writing (early 2026), the only part of the Foley photography collection that is easily accessible are the prints. There are a small number of prints a few inches wide, but most are contact prints. The contact prints are numerous, but probably less numerous than the negatives that we hope to digitize.

A contact print is a photographic print made without an enlarger. That means that the print is the same size as the negative—very small. Foley’s contact prints were made from two types of film: 35mm film (135 film), which Foley shot on an Exacta camera, and medium-format film. Foley shot his medium-format images using a Rolleiflex, which produces a 6x6cm negative. All of the prints are black and white. We know that Foley used Mai Sing Photo Finishing Service in Taipei. The negatives were developed in Kodak Microdol. Of greater consequence for the style of Foley’s photography were the lenses he used. The Rolleiflex came with a fixed Planar?f/3.5. The Taipei brochure does not mention its focal length, but I guess it was 80mm, which on medium format gives a natural field of view. For the Exacta, Foley used the “normal” Biotar?f/2—I assume, 50mm—as well as a 135mm telephoto and the wide-angle 35mm.

A study of the contents of Foley’s photographs remains to be done. The photographs show urban and rural life in Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s, Catholic activities (worship, Christmas plays), other religious activities, the media industry (film, radio), Americans and Europeans in Taiwan, the ROC military, etc. There are also photos from Syria, Australia, the Philippines, Africa or the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Massachusetts, including the Boston College campus.

By M?rten S?derblom Saarela, Special Collections Librarian.

February 4, 2026.