Visual representations of elegant gatherings appeared in historical Chinese painting to document literati pursuits and demonstrate scholars’ social networks. The invention of photography and its introduction to China in the 1840s facilitated the making of photographs and the establishment of photography studios, but the newly-imported technology also translated traditional aesthetic norms into new photographic mediums. This paper investigates the intermediality of paintings, photolithographic prints, and photographs, in relation to images of literati pursuits and elegant gatherings in late Qing Shanghai. By examining the production and circulation of works, I argue that photographic mediums expanded literati tastes into a genuinely popular taste that contributed to the construction of individual identities and shaped a new mass audience.