SOURCES | CREDITS

Beers, Burton. China in Old Photographs 1860-1910 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978).

Edwards, Elizabeth (ed). Anthropology and Photography 1860–1920 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with The Royal Anthropological Institute, London: 1992).

Goodrich, L. Carrington and Nigel Cameron. The Face of China As Seen by Photographers & Travelers 1860–1912 (New York: Aperture Foundation, 1978).

Maxwell, Anne. Colonial Photography and Exhibitions: Representations of the ‘Native” and the Making of European Identities (London and New York Leicester University Press, 1999).

Morris, Rosalind C. “Introduction.” Photograhies East: the Camera and Its Histories in East and South East Asia. Edited by Rosalind C. Morris, pp. 1-28 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009).

Pearce, Nick. “Photographs of Beijing in The Oriental Museum, Durham,” Apollo
(March 1998): pp. 33-39.

Pinney, Christopher. Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

Pinney, Christopher. “The Parallel Histories of Anthropology and Photography.” In Anthropology and Photography 1860-1920, edited by Elizabeth Edwards, pp. 74-95 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with The Royal Anthropological Institute, London: 1992).

Poignant, Roslyn. “Surveying the Field of View: The Making of the RAI Photographic Collection.” In Anthropology and Photography 1860-1920, edited by Elizabeth Edwards, pp. 42-73 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with The Royal Anthropological Institute, London: 1992).

Ryan, James R. Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

Santoyo, Maria. “The Travels of a Victorian Photographer.” In Sheying: Shades of China 1850-1900, pp. 23-28 (New York: Turner, 2008).

Spencer, Frank. “Some Notes on the Attempt to Apply Photography to Anthropometry during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century.” In Anthropology and Photography 1860-1920, edited by Elizabeth Edwards, pp. 99-107 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with The Royal Anthropological Institute, London: 1992).

Thiriez, Regine. Barbarian Lens: Western Photographers of the Qianlong Emperor’s European Palaces (Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1998).

Thomson, John. China and Its People in Early Photographs: An unabridged reprint of the classic 1873/4 work (New York: Dover Publications, 1982).

Thomson, John. Illustrations of China and Its People, a Series of Two Hundred Photographs with Letterpress Description of the Places and People Represented. 4 vols. (London: Sampson Low, Marston Low, and Searle, 1873 [vols. 1 and 2] and 1874 [vols. 3 and 4]).

Warner, John. China The Land and Its People: Early Photographs by John Thomson (Hong Kong: John Warner Publications, 1977).

Worswick, Clark. Sheying: Shades of China 1850-1900 (New York: Turner, 2008).

Worswick, Clark and Jonathan Spence. Imperial China: Photographs 1850-1912 (New York: Pennwick Publishing, 1978).

Wue, Roberta. Picturing Hong Kong: Photography 1855-1910 (New York: Asia Society, 1997).

Endnotes

1. For an account of Thomson’s photographs of Thailand see Rosalind C. Morris, “Photography and the Power of Images in the History of Power,” in Photograhies East: the Camera and Its Histories in East and South East Asia, edited by Rosalind C. Morris, pp. 121-131 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009).

2. See James R. Ryan, Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of British Empire, pp. 161-167 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), and Anne Maxwell, Colonial Photography and Exhibitions: Representations of the “Native” and the Making of European Identities, pp. 57-67 (London and New York: Leicester University Press, 1999).

3. My discussion of treaty-port imagery builds on some of Ryan’s insights and arguments. See Ryan, Picturing Empire, pp. 65-67.

4. Ryan and Maxwell’s examinations of Thomson’s types focus on his plates of cameo portraits but neither scholar addresses this seminal image.

5. Thomson changes the spelling from “Pe-po-hoan,” which he used in the captions for Volume 1, to “Pepohoan.” Romanization of Chinese terms had not yet been standardized when Thomson published Illustrations of China and Its People. This change probably reflects input he received from a linguist before the second volume was published.

6. Ryan, Picturing Empire (pp.140-143), discusses a particularly compelling case of salvage ethnology and photography focused on Tasmanian aborigines in the late 1850s. Christopher Pinney, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs, pp.46-50 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), cites other examples.

7. 19th-century conceptions of race utilized a hierarchy based on skin color: white, yellow, brown, red, black.

8. For a brief history and illustrations of the Lamprey and Huxley methods see Frank Spencer, “Some Notes on the Attempt to Apply Photography to Anthropometry during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” in Anthropology and Photography 1860-1920, ed. Elizabeth Edwards, pp. 99-107 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with The Royal Anthropological Institute, London: 1992).

9. Ryan also suggests that Thomson’s Yangzi images and narrative rely on precedents set by William Allen’s 1840 Picturesque Views on the River Niger. See Ryan, Picturing Empire, p. 65.

10. See Ryan, Picturing Empire, pp. 63-65.

11. Ryan discusses the broader concerns of the RGS and provides a general introduction to the relationship between photography and RGS expeditions. See Ryan, Picturing Empire, pp. 30-44.


Credits

“John Thomson's China” was developed by
Visualizing Cultures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and presented on MIT OpenCourseWare.

MIT Visualizing Cultures:
John W. Dower
Project Director
Emeritus Professor of History

Shigeru Miyagawa
Project Director
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Kochi Prefecture-John Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture

Ellen Sebring
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Scott Shunk
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Andrew Burstein
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In collaboration with:
Allen Hockley
Author, essay, “John Thomson's China l”
Associate Professor of Art History
Dartmouth College

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