John Thomson (1837-1921) Scottish photographer in the Far East and in Europe

Born in Edinburgh in the year of Queen Victoria's accession, John Thomson spent many years of his life far away from his native country. He travelled with his photographic apparatus to the other side of the world to bring back pictures of people, landscapes and artifacts of different cultures. His photographs gained him much renown in his lifetime, as they were used as the basis for both wood-engraved illustrations in periodicals, and in many books, some by Thomson himself, others by authors wishing to depict exotic cultures. Thomson's own books include: The antiquities of Cambodia, 1867, Illustrations of China and its people, 1873-1874, Street life in London, 1877-1878, Through Cyprus with the camera, 1879, and Through China with a camera, 1898.

The collection of almost 700 of Thomson's original glass negatives now in the Library was acquired by Henry Wellcome in the year Thomson died. The subjects of these photographs are mostly Asian countries: China, Taiwan, Cambodia, and Thailand, though Thomson's later visit to Cyprus is also documented. Wellcome was interested in the photographs for the comparative record they provide of civilizations both primitive and sophisticated.

From the bustling British trading port of Hong Kong to almost unpopulated regions far inland on mainland China, Thomson used his bulky wooden camera, large and fragile glass plates, and potentially explosive chemicals to record subjects as varied as mandarins, machine guns, brides, scenery, and slave labourers. As well as a distancing effect, shown in the haunting pictures of the semi-ruined, jungle-clad temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, many of Thomson's photographs have some resonance with daily life more than a century later, for example the everyday taking of tea in a Hong Kong interior. Thomson was himself aware of the importance of his own work, as he put it: 'We are now making history, and the sun picture supplies the means of passing down a record of what we are, and what we have achieved in this nineteenth century of our progress.'

John Thomson's archive of photographs at the Wellcome Library is remarkable not merely because it has survived, but because of the range of subject matter and the exceptionally high quality of the images. The works are catalogued in the Wellcome Library Online Catalogue . Prints made from the original negatives may be seen in the Library for reference.

See further: Richard Ovenden, John Thomson (1837-1921) photographer, Edinburgh: The Stationery Office, 1997; Stephen White, John Thomson: life and photographs, London: Thames and Hudson, 1985

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