Photographs and negatives, between 1929-1948

This series consists largely of photographs and negatives left to Sickman as part of the Thomas S. Handforth estate in 1948. Handforth (1897-1948) was an artist and author. He and Sickman met in the early 1930s in Peiping (now Beijing), where they were part of the American and British expat community. A large portion of these photographs were made during his travels throughout Asia during the 1930s. Included in this collection are images of the people and places that inspired him to write and illustrate the book Mei Li, which won the American Library Association’s Caldecott Award in 1939. Most of the photographs are unidentified, but some contain enough information to identify their location. Many of the photographs and negatives contain or came from envelopes that contained a yet undeciphered numbering system.