HS, Vol 52(1), 2014

Through the Looking Glass: Photography, Science

and Imperial Motivations in John Thomson’s
Photographic Expeditions

Geoffrey Belknap
Harvard University

My design in the accompanying work is to present a series of pictures of

China and its people, such as shall convey an accurate impression of the
country I traversed as well as of the arts, usages, and manners which prevail
in different provinces of the Empire. With this intention I made the camera
the constant companion of my wanderings, and to it I am indebted for the
faithful reproduction of the scenes I visited, and of the types of race with
which I came into contact. [Emphasis added]1

These are the introductory remarks that the Victorian photographer John Thomson
(1837–1921) presented to his readers before they delved into his first of four volumes
of tipped-in photographs displaying Illustrations of China and its people. Through
this preamble, Thomson highlights central issues — for both contemporary and
modern readers — in reading photographs of the Far East: are these accurate rep-
resentations, and, if so, how does this align with the desire for racial classification
through visual codification? These are issues that have been read and reread in the
analysis of these images by historians of art and anthropology.2 Yet the processes of
reproduction through which these images came to be read by Victorian audiences,
whether as scientific objects or otherwise, have largely been ignored. This paper
deconstructs what it meant for Thomson to be “indebted for the faithful reproduction
of the scenes I visited” in the construction of a colonial gaze. Considering that these
images were invested with their own claims to accuracy and classificatory veracity,
what epistemological shifts did they undergo when they were reproduced? And how
does the context of their reproduction in British books and periodicals affect their
claims to accurately represent racial and topographical types?
For Thomson, these photographs were scientific pursuits. To take a photograph
in the late nineteenth century was a technical, mechanical and chemical endeavour,
and the images that resulted from Thomson’s lens were embedded in practices of
taxonomical colonial encounter.3 Borrowing from the language used by Wilder in her
work on the relationship between science and photography, Thomson’s images are
both photographs of science and photographic science.4 The images in Illustrations
of China and its people — as well as his later photographic books The Straits of
Malacca, through Cyprus with a camera and street life in London — were intended
to offer representational proof of racial classification. At the same time, the chemical
and technological aspect of the images’ production and reproduction were essential
to Thomson’s claim to accuracy. Yet Tucker has cautioned us that, for nineteenth-
century audiences, photographs — whether or not they were intended to be scientific

Copyright © The Author(s) 2014

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74 · Geoffrey Belknap

objects — were rarely viewed with unconditional trust.5 Thus when reading Thom-
son’s photographs, they become conditional scientific objects, positioned between the
intention of the author and the evaluation of the reader. Moreover, this conditionality
of the photographic image was not only situated in the reading of the image itself,
but in the context of its print reproduction.
Edwards, in her work on photography and anthropology, has reminded us that a
photograph has a social biography, and that the reading of photographic images is tied
to both the places in which they were made and those in which they were displayed.6
Pinney has further emphasised the importance of local photographers and vendors to
the adoption of photography in the Indian context, and has demonstrated how vari-
ous technologies of communication, such as the telegraph, comingled when images
of India moved outside of the national boundaries.7 Thus when reading Thomson’s
photographs, there is a clear representational conception of racial and geographical
difference, yet the reading of these visual tropes was constructed through more than
just the photographs themselves; it was also mediated by the textual spaces and print
technologies that he used to reproduce them.
The epistemological framework though which this paper examines Thomson’s
visual construction of foreign spaces, places and people centres on aspects of post-
colonial theory.8 According to Loomba, a central concern within this historiography
is the notion that the classification of extra-European lands and people through vari-
ous forms of information-gathering expeditions was key in developing strategies
of colonial control.9 While various forms of knowledge formation about colonised
subjects constitute Said’s notion of Orientalism, Said specifies that “Orientalism
derives from a particular closeness experienced between Britain and France and the
Orient”.10 Whereas this closeness has been traditionally ascribed to textual discursive
systems, the evaluation of visual forms of colonial control has recently been gaining
recognition.11 Looking again at Thomson’s work through this lens, it becomes evident
that the impact of colonial photographs lay not just in their production, but in their
reproduction in print — in their closeness to the reader.
Kaplan’s notion of the imperial gaze is also particularly useful as it allows for a
better understanding of how the act of looking can create, and reinforce, a power
dynamic and how the colonised can empower themselves by “looking back”.12 The
notion of an imperial gaze, or racially constructed ways of looking, helps inform the
interlocutions of Thomson’s conceptualisation of colonial spaces. Thomson’s images
of China, Cyprus, Malacca and the London labouring class are valuable because,
as Loomba points out, “the linkage between photographic images, ethnographies
and quasi-scientific data gathering, census taking and colonial policy underlines the
intricate, subtle, and even contradictory, connections between colonial representa-
tions, institutions and policies”.13
Finally, while Thomson worked within traditional notions of race, class and gender
within distant Colonial sites, what is particularly interesting is that he applied these
same categories to the local context of the London poor; that these Colonial sites
gained meaning through their reproduction in print, not their production on glass and

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 Through the Looking Glass   · 75

paper. For Thomson, the interaction of the textual and visual space of the Victorian
photographic travel book affected the way in which his taxonomic boundaries were
constructed.

Thomson’s Gaze

Photography as a tool was perfectly suited to the project of imperial expansion. It

acted as a precise way for English audiences to conceptualise foreign spaces, places
and peoples. By photographing physical characteristics and geographical landscape,
faraway lands and people, they could be scrutinised and conceptualised by a diverse
reading audience. This conceptualisation was formed around the perceptions of the
photographers themselves. As a later biographer of Thomson’s points out, his moti-
vation to photograph the Orient was “unlike many nineteenth-century photographic
expeditions … not one accompanying conquest or domination (political, economic,
cultural). Thomson’s approach was born of a spirit of enquiry, and a desire to gain
a true understanding of what he saw.”14 It is unlikely, however, that Thomson was
not at least partially motivated by imperial desires. The timing of his entrance into
China and Cyprus is particularly revealing — he entered China just after the end
of the Second Opium War, and later entered Cyprus shortly after the Congress of
Berlin, when the occupation of Cyprus was ceded to England. Thomson’s choice to
enter China and Cyprus, and his subsequent visual interpretation of these sites were
thus motivated by the international politics of British imperial expansion.15 While
Thomson’s form of imperial conquest was not centred on physical, intellectual or
emotional subjugation — he did not articulate an intentional desire to “conquer and
dominate” the Chinese and Cypriot — he did construct a visual and textual language of
racial, economic and gender difference which was articulated through the publication
of his photographic interactions with colonial spaces. Thomson acted as an imperial
agent, with the camera as his tool of visual acculturation and the travel book as his
medium for expressing this gaze.

The Cangue

While Thomson took photographs of a range of scenes, peoples, and objects, there is
one image which, through its reproduction across a number of texts and the content
of the image itself, draws the attention of the reader. It is to this image that we will
briefly turn in order to exemplify how a reader would have read one of Thomson’s
images, and how I will read his images and texts in this paper. “The Cangue” which
shows a man locked up in stocks, became for Thomson a representative example
of his travels in China (Figure 1). The reading of this image becomes a reading of
Chinese cruelty not through the content of the image itself — Thomson had a number
of images in his books that showed cruelty — but through its reproduction across
texts.16 The conceptualization of the Chinese as cruel and uncivilised was nothing
new. As Hillemann points out, this was a key factor in shifting English conceptions
of China in the nineteenth century.17

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76 · Geoffrey Belknap

Ryan reinforces the historiographic nature of this preconception when he repro-

duces Thomson’s photograph of “The Cangue” in his book, Picturing place.18 When
looking at Thomson’s original use of this image in The Straits of Malacca, we find that
“The Cangue” was used as the frontispiece for the book, thus reinforcing a represen-
tational codification of a “typical Oriental person” (Figure 2). Moreover, the picture
of “The Cangue” in this version of The Straits of Malacca differs significantly from
the picture produced for Illustrations of China and its people, and later in Picturing
Empire — it is a woodcut rather than the original photographic print. The differences
between Thomson’s original and the reproduction are slight, but important. The posi-
tion of the head is different in the wood-engraved version, illustrating that it was not
an exact replication of the original picture. More importantly, the background in the
wood-engraving is obscured, and only partially displayed. The benefit of the original
picture is that the viewer is able to see something of the location and atmosphere
in which this prisoner was located. The wood-engraving is thus a mediated artistic

Fig. 1. John Thomson, “The Cangue”, Illu­

strations of China and its people, iii, Plate VI,
number 13. The image is 10½cm × 9cm on a
page which measures 47cm × 34½cm. This is
one of four images on the page, and is placed
at the bottom left corner of the page. The other
images are entitled number 11, “The Shanghai
Wheel- Borrow” (top left), number 12, “Cotton
Spinning Machine” (top right), and number
14, “The Cage” (bottom right). This image is
also reproduced in James Ryan’s Picturing
Empire, p. 165. Image courtesy of the Wellcome
Trust. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-
Commercial version 2.0 licence for England
and Wales.
F ig . 2. John Thomson, “An Unfortunate Thief
— Punishment of the Cangue” in The Straits of
Malacca, frontispiece. The image measures 6cm
x 6cm, on a page which measures 21½cm × 14cm,
and is placed directly below the title and author.
A caption below the image reads “Illustrated with
upwards of sixty wood engravings by J. D. Cooper
from the Author’s own Sketches and Photographs”.
The title page is also placed directly opposite a full
page engraving titled “View of Sholon, Cochin
China”. Image courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University.

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 Through the Looking Glass   · 77

representation of what the original picture was trying to portray. Considering that
the camera gained much of its authority through its perceived mechanical ability to
offer verisimilitude without subjective interpretation, the fact that Thomson chose to
illustrate a seemingly representative example of Chinese cruelty in his book through
the medium of a wood-engraver is telling. Wood engraving is a reproductive medium
that distances the reader from the original photographic referent. Although Thomson
may have preferred to reproduce his images as a halftone (as he did in some of his
other works) he was limited by the print technologies of the period.19 By using engrav-
ings rather than photographs, Thomson’s books (and images), were able to reach a
much larger audience. If he had reproduced only photographic prints, the cost of the
book would have made it available to a much smaller audience.
The value of “The Cangue” takes on further resonance when it was repeated later
in The Straits of Malacca (Figure 3). Unlike the frontispiece, the reproduction of this
image takes on a different reading due to the story that was being told by Thomson

Fig. 3.  John Thomson, “An Unfortunate Thief - Punishment of the Cangue” in The Straits of Malacca,
364. The image measures 6cm x 6cm, on a page which measures 21½cm × 14cm — the same
measurements as Figure 2. Image courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University.

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78 · Geoffrey Belknap

about thieves, and the corrupt nature of their policing in China. The story which
Thomson was telling at this point in the The Straits of Malacca concerned the pecu-
liar way in which the policing of thieves was enforced in the province of Foochow.
According to Thomson, the police force dedicated to catching thieves (named the
Ma-qui), would — rather than detaining an apprehended thief — demand money
from the culprit in order for them to avoid arrest. If they could not, or would not,
supply this ransom they were then placed under arrest and punishment, such as that
pictured in Thomson’s image, would follow. Thomson described the scene in the
following terms:
Should the thieves refuse to yield up the property at the price he [the Ma-qui]
offers, they run the risk of being imprisoned and tortured. I photographed a thief
— who had just escaped from gaol; he had been an unprofitable burglar, a bad
constituent of the Ma-qui, and was accordingly triced up by the thumbs until
the cords had worn the flesh away and left nothing but the bare bones exposed.20
This passage conveys a sense of backwardness and corruption in the policing of
Foochow, at the same time that it points to a disparity between the invocation of
photographic realism and the realism of the image. Thomson stated that he “photo-
graphed a thief,” but did not reproduce the image. The only image of a thief in this
description is “The Cangue”, which shows a man in a form of stockades rather than
being “triced up by the thumbs”. Thus, while the reader reads about a photograph
and its production, they only see a wood engraving and an engraving which doesn’t
refer to the scene being discussed. Moreover, in order to see the original photograph
of “The Cangue”, the reader would need to move to Thomson’s earlier book on
China — Illustrations of China and its people (Figure 1), and would not be able to
see the photograph to which he refers because he never printed it. Thus for Thomson
and his readers, the meaning in imaging a foreign place came not just in the image
itself, but in the contexts of its production and reproduction.

Biography of the Books

Understanding the construction and reception of Thomson’s images necessarily

depends on reading more than his images. They were primarily reprinted in a series
of books, and it is through these books that Thomson gained his broadest audience.
It is to the reading of these books as visual and textual objects that this paper now
turns. Between 1862 and 1872 Thomson spent all of his time travelling and living
in Asia. Throughout this period he took many photographs of the people and places
he encountered which he would later turn into Illustrations of China and its people
(1873–74), a work which was printed over four volumes and contained over 200 photo-
graphic prints. After moderate success, due to the high cost of printing, Thomson later
produced The Straits of Malacca (1875) — a shorter book, with fewer illustrations
and more written descriptions. Building on the success of The Straits of Malacca,
Thomson returned to the topic of China, and published a version of his travels titled
The land and people of China (1876), which was a largely text-based book, with a

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 Through the Looking Glass   · 79

few engravings made from his photographs. After gaining fame with these initial
publications, Thomson turned his focus away from the Orient and towards the London
working class. Street life in London (1877) was a joint effort by Thomson and Adolphe
Smith and was based on the visual framework that Henry Mayhew (1812–87) had
utilised in his book London labour and London poor (1851).21 Thomson and Smith
described their motivation behind Street life in London in the following terms: “the
subject [the labouring class] is so vast and undergoes such rapid variations that it can
never be exhausted; nor, as our national wealth increases, can we be too frequently
reminded of the poverty that nevertheless still exists in our midst.”22 Thomson and
Smith aimed to document the changes in the economic circumstances of the Brit-
ish working class — changes that were occurring in part because of the imperial
expansion that Thomson had captured on film a decade earlier. Finally, Thomson
returned to travel photography with his investigation of Cyprus in Through Cyprus
with a camera (1879).
Thomson’s books were produced in a period just before the medium of photogra-
phy become easier to use and more accessible to the general public. In the 1880s the
price of prepared gelatine dry plates declined to such a degree as to allow middle-
class enthusiasts to take up photography on a larger scale.23 Readers of Thomson’s
books were not only presented with startling pictures of new imperial subjects, but
for many this was reinforced through the tool of photographic reproduction, which
had become ubiquitous within Victorian culture and the marketplace. Part of this
ubiquity was the presentation and reproduction of photographic images in lectures
at scientific societies.
The values of Thomson’s images of Asia were buoyed by his association with the
science of geography, and particularly his participation in the Royal Geographical
Society (RGS).24 Thomson was one of the most avid geographic photographers of
his period. According to Ryan, in his photographic expeditions and as a member
and instructor at the RGS, Thomson became an important promoter of photography
applied to the science of geography.25 Geographic and imperial knowledge expanded
simultaneously, with photography as an essential tool to this growth.26 Driver points
out that the exploration of colonial geographies in the late nineteenth century was
intimately linked with an imperial travel narrative of seeing new landscapes, peo-
ples, vegetation and animals.27 For Thomson, this dream of geographic colonisation
was realised not only through his own personal sight, but by capturing his visual
experiences on a photographic plate and the subsequent reinterpretation of these
experiences in publication.
Because scientific discourse was so closely associated with the creation and produc-
tion of photography, photographs obtained a specific cultural and visual authenticity.
Whether such photographs depicted landscapes, architecture, or people, the Victorian
reading public did not always question the reality of the picture, or the preconcep-
tions which framed what was in the picture. Although some historians argue that
many of the questions asked about the reliability of photographs today were asked
in the nineteenth century, it is more likely that scepticism would have been directed

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80 · Geoffrey Belknap

towards photographs that undermined preconceived notions of what was real and
what was not.28 What the reading audience were seeing in Thomson’s books were
not photographs themselves but reproductions. The original referent was distinctly
separated from the reading of these images and was instead formulated through
multiple modes of production.

Constructing his Images

The construction of Thomson’s images, whether of landscapes or people, necessitated

his interaction with local inhabitants. In instances like “Cypriot Peasants” (Figure
4), he needed participants to stand in front of his camera, and in the very picturing
of these people Thomson constructed a visual representation that emphasised racial
difference. Thomson was also highly dependent on local labour to help him produce
his images and conduct his travels. Thus stories about the men that worked for him
and the inhabitants who populated the world in which he travelled were equally
important to the way he constructed for his readers a perception of the Far East.
For Thomson it was not always easy to obtain willing human participants for his
photographs. According to Ryan, many natives were weary of the mechanical instru-
ment that Thomson carried around with him, and due to this often needed to pay his

Fig. 4.  John Thomson, “Cypriote Peasants”, Through Cyprus with a camera, Plate 10. The image measures
15½cm × 11½cm on a page which measures 31cm × 24 cm. The image is alone on the page and
the text is located two pages previously.

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 Through the Looking Glass   · 81

Fig. 5.  John Thomson, “A Mendicant Priest”, Illustrations of China and its people, i, Plate IX, number
16. The image measures 11½cm × 9½cm on a page which measures 47cm × 34½cm, and is
placed on the top right hand corner of the page. The image is one of four other images placed on
the same page — number 16 placed on the top left of the page and entitled “Front of Kwan-Yin
Temple, Hong-Kong”; number 17 placed to on the bottom left corner of the page and entitled “A
Street in Hong-Kong”; and number 18 placed on the bottom right and entitled “Opium Smoking
in a restaurant”. All images are separated by a thin blank page of acid-free paper from the textual
descriptions. Image courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

participants.29 The possibility of economic recompense at times overcame this fear of

photography for native participants, but not always. For example, in a picture titled
“A Mendicant Priest” (Figure 5) Thomson paid the participant fifty cents to pose for
the picture, who afterwards demanded more money because “the picture had bereft
him of a good portion of his good luck, which he would require to work up again with
offerings”.30 This is a prime example of how preconceived notions of foreign customs
and practices affected the framing and process of photography. This story of use and
interaction between Thomson and the Mendicant Priest is not directly visible in the
image itself. While the historical reader may assume a story of interaction between
the photographer and the photographed, Thomson made this interaction explicitly
knowable. It is the reading of the image and the contexts of the image’s production
that gives the image its particular value.
Not all interactions, however, between European photographers and native
inhabitants were underlined by a fear of photography — some were familiar with
the photographic process. In The Strait of Malacca, Thomson recognised that there
were native Chinese photographers operating in the area. Thomson gives the example
of Afong, who he describes as “a little, plump, good-natured son of Han, a man of
cultivated taste, and imbued with a wonderful appreciation of art”. Thomson went
on to praise the artistic eye and technical ability of Afong — something he saw as
essential to any good photographer.31 Yet Afong was the only example that Thomson
could find of a native Chinese photographer. There is no contextual background to

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82 · Geoffrey Belknap

Fig. 6.  John Thomson, “A Street in Canton”, The Straits of Malacca, facing p. 248. This engraving is
placed on its own page. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Afong, but it seems from Thomson’s description that he was an educated man from
the upper echelons of Chinese society who had appropriated European technology
to start his own business.
The use of Afong took a central position in Thomson’s broader discussion of the
marketplace in a large Chinese city. In the The Straits of Malacca, when discussing
Afong, Thomson reproduced an engraving that depicted the street where he had his
studio in Hong Kong (Figure 6). He led the reader through the image that they were
seeing:
Retracing our steps to Queen’s Road, we pause before a display of huge sign-
boards, each one glowing in bold Roman letters with the style and title of some
Chinese artists. The first we come to is that of Afong, photographer; to this suc-
ceeds Chin-Sing, portrait painter. Then follows Ating; and many others make up
the list of the painters and photographers of HongKong.32
This description was meant to place the reader in the scene; to allow them to imag-
ine that they were actually walking down this Hong Kong street themselves. What

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 Through the Looking Glass   · 83

Thomson did not point out was that this image is a reproduction of a photograph
published in Illustrations of China and its people (Figure 7).
The differences between the engraving and the photograph are primarily engen-
dered through the distortion of distance in the foreground — in the engraving the floor
is longer than in the photograph but the details of the signposting and the individuals
who occupy the scene are well reproduced. The main difference between the two
images is in their description. Unlike The Straits of Malacca, Thomson makes no
reference to Afong, and instead gives a reading of the foreign aesthetics of the Chinese
street. “The streets of the Chinese city differ greatly from those of Europe, and are
always extremely narrow, except at Nanking and Peking”. Thomson continued “Physic
Street, or, more correctly, Tsiang-LanKiai (our Market Street), as the Chinese term it,
is one of the finest streets in Canton, and, with its varied array of brightly coloured
sign-boards, present an appearance no less interesting than picturesque”.33 The read-
ing of this image, therefore, took on different meanings in Thomson’s books. When
the photograph was reproduced it was “picturesque”, but when it was an engraving it
was a visual aid to the text allowing a reader to imagine what Afong’s photographic
workshop looked like. The value of these images lay not in their production, but
the way in which they were reproduced for an audience back in England. Fa-ti Fan

Fig. 7. John Thomson, “Physic Street, Canton”, Illustrations of China and its people, i, plate XX. Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

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84 · Geoffrey Belknap

argues that there was more of a reciprocal relationship of knowledge interchange in

the interactions between British scientists and the native inhabitants of China.34 While
it is clear that Thomson spent much time interacting with the local inhabitants of the
locations that he photographed, and quite often hired native labourers, the recipro-
cal nature of his relationship is unclear. Considering that Thomson controlled and
conceptualised the visual constructions of foreign landscapes and people in terms of
racial and topographical categorisation and their concomitant commercial value, the
influence of local knowledge on Thomson’s photographs appears limited. Instead, it
is evident that Thomson imposed his own cultural conceptions on the native inhabit-
ants and did not actively appropriate indigenous knowledge.
Ovenden, in his biography of Thomson, points to the indifference that he held for
indigenous knowledge when he writes “Thomson’s typically European disregard
for native cultures and sensibilities recur in his writing about Cambodia, which in
1867 he regarded as a ‘miserable remnant of Khamain,’ and he repeats his imperi-
alist accusations concerning the ‘listlessness and apathy’ of the native peoples”.35
Considering that Thomson had such a strong conception of the laziness and apathy
of the Chinese people, any use of local resources and knowledge would have been
accompanied with a notion of English superiority. While he may have appropriated
their labour, he did it with the same notions of racial and economic difference with
which he constructed his photographs.
Other than the participants that Thomson chose to pose for his pictures, the closest
relationships that he had with indigenous peoples were with his porters. Photography
during the 1860s and 1870s was not a small operation. It required tents, stores of
chemicals, glass plates, not to mention the weighty camera itself and the food and
living provisions that were necessary for long trips. Thomson relied on the assistance of
indigenous labour and he often commented on his need for labour, and his frustrations
in obtaining it. In one particular passage, Thomson pointed out that he had “trained
two Madras men, or boys as they were called here, to act as my printers and assistants,
the Chinese having, at that time, refused to lend themselves to such devilry as taking
likenesses of objects without the touch of human hands”.36 Ovenden explains that,
Thomson found it impossible to enter into a deep understanding of the culture
in which he lived for several months, since, despite his efforts to gain as much
knowledge of the Cochin-Chinese as he could, prejudices and mis-assumptions
litter his writing. Like most nineteenth-century European writers on Asia he
was unable to shake off his cultural cloak and appreciate the past and present
experiences of the people he encountered without comparing them to western
cultural paradigms.37
Thomson’s interaction with indigenous peoples was not a reciprocal relationship.
Rather it was a dual relationship of documenter and subject, and employer-employee
— a duality which becomes evident in both the photographs themselves, and the
descriptions that surround them.

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 Through the Looking Glass   · 85
Thomson and The Graphic

The reading of Thomson’s images was not isolated to his books, or even his lec-
tures at the RGS. Rather, the first place that a reader would have encountered one
of Thomson’s images was in the popular illustrated periodical The Graphic. A year
prior to the publication of Illustrations of China and its people, Thomson’s images
and stories about China experienced an even greater audience through the publication
of over two hundred of his prints in The Graphic between 1872 and 1874.
The Graphic was the perfect venue for the display of Thomson’s images. Unlike
the very well-known and popular Illustrated London news, The Graphic set out to
be the paper with the most accurate representation of the Victorian world. In the
preface to one of their first volumes, The Graphic made explicit the value of their
images: “Our aim has been to produce a weekly paper which should not be merely
of temporary interest, but should be worthy of being preserved as a constant source
of entertainment, and as a faithful literary and pictorial representation of the times.”38
The Graphic aimed to be an illustrated newspaper which functioned more like a book
— something to keep and to display on your walls. The value of this paper was in
its permanency and in the “faithfulness” of its representation of the Victorian world.
This notion of pictorial realism was echoed by Thomson in his preface to Illustra­
tions of China and its people.
It is a novel experiment to attempt to illustrate a book of travels with photographs,
a few years back so perishable, and so difficult to reproduce. But the art is now
so far advanced, that we can multiply the copied with the same facility, and print
them with the same materials as in the case of woodcuts and engravings. I feel
somewhat sanguine about the success of the undertaking, and I hope to see the
process which I have thus applied adopted by other travellers; for the faithfulness
of such pictures affords the nearest approach that can be made towards placing
the reader actually before the scene which is represented.39
The presentation of Thomson’s photographs in The Graphic is fruitful ground for
understanding how his imaging of the Far East gained credibility and value back in
England.
We can access this location of photographic trust though an analysis of a single
Thomson photograph, represented across different print and visual reproduction
formats. In a sense this is what Edwards calls tracing the “social biography” of
an image. However, instead of following the original photograph, we will trace its
reproduction in print and thereby help locate the value that was placed on this image
across multiple print formats.40
The images in question were all entitled “A Chinese Artist,” or a variant thereof,
and first appeared in The Graphic on 11 January 1873 as the frontispiece for the
issue (Figure 8). This picture represents a typical artist in Hong Kong, producing
a portrait for a Chinese woman. And yet there is a reproductive disparity — the
original photograph that was reproduced in Thomson’s first volume of Illustrations
of China and its people is strikingly different (Figure 9). Although the subject is the

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86 · Geoffrey Belknap

same, these are two very different pictures, the only similarities being the posture
and pose of the artist. It is likely that The Graphic only used the artist in the original
photograph for their engraving, and fabricated the rest of the image.41 The difference
in the content of these two images is striking. In particular, the presence of the subject
of the painting in Figure 8 creates a very different reading of the image. In Figure
9, the focus is on the painting created by the artist (with a number of his paintings
hanging in the background) and the skill of the artist in making a new portrait. In

Fig. 8. “A Chinese Artist”, Frontispiece, The Graphic, vii, no. 163, 11 January 1873, 21.

F ig . 9. “A HongKong Artist” John Thomson, Fig. 10. “Chinese Artist, HongKong”, John Thomson,
Illustrations of China and its people The land and the people of China (London:
(London: S. Low, Marston, Low, and Searle Society for the Promotion of Christian
1873), i, Plate IV, no. 7. Knowledge. 1876), p. 172

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 Through the Looking Glass   · 87

Figure 8 this focus is eradicated, and instead the narrative of the image becomes the
process of sitting for one’s portrait. What these two illustrations demonstrate is that
while The Graphic used a photograph to assist in the making of their illustrations,
they strayed considerably from the original content. Thus, the veracity of the scene
was not a central concern of the image, and the engraver could manipulate the image
to suit their own design.
An engraving of “A Chinese Artist” which offered greater fidelity to the original
photograph appeared in The land and the people of China (Figure 10). The book
where this image appeared is drastically different from Illustrations of China and its
people, as it is primarily textual, and in fact the only image displayed in the chapter
on Chinese arts is “A Chinese Artist”. This reproduction is much later than that of
both Illustrations of China and its people and The Graphic issue where the image
first appeared. As The Graphic was the first venue for the presentation of this image
this may be the reason why their reproduction was so different from the original
photograph or the subsequent reproduction.
When comparing Figures 9 and 10, the content, positioning and construction of the
scene are accurately reproduced. Upon closer inspection there are slight variations
that tell us something about what an accurate reproduction of a photograph entailed
in a popular periodical such as The Graphic. In the background of Figure 10, the
paintings on the wall and on the table stand give a fair representation of those depicted
in Figure 9, but they are not exactly reproduced (the slightly crooked positions of
the paintings on the wall are justified in the engraving). The most obvious differ-
ence in the two illustrations is the removal of a piece of furniture at the far right of
the photograph. What this comparison shows is that images taken from photographs
and published in varying forms of popular print elicited different notions of what
reproductive fidelity was.
When taken together, The Graphic reproduction and the original photographic print
seem to be two completely different pictures. However, these boundaries of difference
break down when the textual descriptions for these images are read together. Much
like The Graphic, within Illustrations of China and its people, each photograph was
accompanied by a short description. The texts for these images were as follows —
The Graphic described the image as:
These limners have frequently a number of bodies in stock, to which the gen-
tleman who confines himself to painting physiognomy will add the head of a
customer in an hour or two; while his partner who paints costumes will make a
few alterations to suit the requirements of dress. In this way of dividing artistic
labour the work can be finished in a day, placed in a flattering frame, and delivered
to its owner, who pays the painter about thirty shillings.42
While Illustrations of China and its people gave a strikingly similar description:
The occupation of these limners consists mainly in making enlarged copies of
photographs. Each house employs a touter [sic], who scours the shipping in the
harbour with samples of the work, and finds many ready customers among the

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88 · Geoffrey Belknap

foreign sailors. These bargain to have Mary and Sue painted on a large scale and
at as small a price as possible, the work to be delivered framed and ready for sea
probably within twenty-four hours.43
Both of these refer to the reproduction of artistic portraits for migrants, but only
the original photograph reinforces this story visually. It was not necessary for the
image to be an exact replication of the original photograph; instead it was more
important to invoke the authenticity of the photograph by textually reinforcing the
presence of the photographer. Thomson had an essential commercial, scientific and
public presence within Victorian society.44 By emphasising Thomson as the author
for the textual description for his photographs within The Graphic, this significantly
reinforced both the visual and textual authenticity of these images.
One aspect, in particular, links all three of these images — their self-reference
to reproduction. The images themselves depict the painting of an individual, which
the reader discovers after seeing the text, is also an amalgam of sight painting and
reproduced forms. The visual space surrounding the images is also covered in
reproductions — there are paintings on the wall, on the ground and on the painter’s
easel. The continual self-reference to reproduction in both the images and texts for
“A Chinese Artist” creates a causal link between the original mechanism of the
image’s production (the photograph) and the technology of print reproduction (the
engraver and print press). “A Chinese Artist”, across its uses in different formats, is
a visual and textual referent to reproduction. It is also an example which shows how
the genre of print — whether book or periodical — altered the veracity with which
an image was reproduced.

Classifications

Much like a Victorian reader, after considering Thomson’s images in the periodical
press, we will now move back to looking at his images in books. Thomson mobilised
three tropes of classification in the organisation of his images: race, gender and class.
It is through these categories that the Victorian reader came to see and understand the
foreign subject and landscape. Moreover, by classifying foreign people under these
three categories of difference, Thomson was not just creating categories, but reflect-
ing the ways in which British society was differentiated. The reading of these visual
classifications is necessarily situated in the reading of these images through the gaze
of Victorian culture. This is compounded by the fact that these categorisations, for
Thomson, were not limited only to the foreign in China, Malacca and Cyprus, but
were turned on the working class and itinerant travellers in England. Thus, Thomson
not only utilised the scientific mechanism of the camera in order to bring the foreign
to the local, but he also used the same technology to make the local foreign. It is
only in reading across Thomson’s books that the text and image make the reading of
a foreign place fundamentally about seeing difference through the contexts of print
reproduction situated in Victorian England.

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 Through the Looking Glass   · 89
Race

Race was one of the most important categories of classification for the imperial
project, and particularly for Thomson, because it was a definitive way of ascribing
social and intellectual differences through physical attributes. According to Ryan,
“like many commercial photographers, Thomson represented racial ‘types’ not just
through individual appearance or parts of the body. He also photographed people
engaged in particular occupations in scenes of ‘street groups,’ particularly in major
cities.”45 It was most often the rural indigenous natives that typified Thomson’s racial
classification, which not only demarcated racial groups but also exaggerated the
rural-urban divide to the English reading audience.
In one particular photograph, “Native Group: Nicosia” (Figure 11), Thomson
highlighted the rural-urban divide by focusing his camera on a group of locals.
Thomson argued that “those selected [for the picture] were deemed fair specimens
of the inhabitants of Nicosia”.46 In this picture Thomson was both classifying racial
types and demonstrating the subjectivity of this mode of categorisation. Within this
photograph Thomson indicated that he chose racial types that were “fair specimens”,
meaning that he chose to leave other local inhabitants out because they did not fit the
stereotypical view of what a Cypriot inhabitant should have looked like. Furthermore,
Thomson purposefully chose to pose the Nicosian inhabitants in conversation, and
yet their awareness of the photographic instrument is betrayed by their stilted poses
and artificial stance. The fallacy of this construction as a natural portrayal of local
inhabitants is illustrated by the man in the far right-hand corner of the picture who,
according to Thomson, was accidentally captured on film because he had stopped
to see what was going on.47 It is interesting that Thomson chose not to cut this inad-
vertent bystander out of the image. The bystander does not play a central role in the

Fig. 11. John Thomson, “Native Group Nicosia”, Through Cyprus with a camera, Plate 16. The image
measures 17cm × 11½cm on a page which measures 31cm × 24cm. The image is alone on the
page and the text is located two pages previously.

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90 · Geoffrey Belknap

photograph, but stands on the periphery, looking in on the scene. Although Thomson
could have easily cropped him from the negative he may have left him in to demon-
strate the verisimilitude of his representation. Nevertheless, the classification of racial
types through photography was a constructed image of the foreign imperial body.

Gender

Both Chinese and Cypriot men and women were classified into gender types, which
were defined through physical characteristics. The camera was the perfect scientific
tool to document and organise sexual differences. Green-Lewis argues that discourses
about photography helped to embody photographs with an external moral sense
which was devoid of a subjective visual construction that classified subjects into
sexual categories.48 Green-Lewis goes on to point out that while the camera may
not have distinguished who was in front of the lens, the camera operator, who in
this period was almost always male, actuated their images along gender boundaries
which affected the popular conceptualisation of the camera as a masculine machine.49
Gender was an effective category of scientific classification because it was facilitated
by a mechanism that was itself defined, and operated, by sexual difference.
In his books, males were classified by Thomson primarily through facial differ-
ences. For example, in a picture entitled “Male Heads, Chinese and Mongolian”
(Figure 12), Thomson identified different physical types for young, old, lower-class
and upper-class Chinese and Mongolian men. Thomson defined a young upper-class
male, numbered 20, as “a fine, attractive-looking little fellow, his full hazel eyes
beaming with kindness and intelligence”, while he defined the working-class man,
numbered 24, as “an ordinary Chinese coolie, a fine specimen of the lower orders of
China”.50 The categorisation in this picture is significant because Thomson not only
identified racial and economic differences through physical characteristics, but he
attributed these differences to their masculinity. If a man had smooth young features
his character and intellect were higher; if his face was more worn and rugged (i.e.
masculine) he was working-class. Women, on the other hand, were categorised in a
different, but equally superficial, way.
In a picture entitled “Chinese Female Coiffure” (Figure 13) Thomson identified
differences in women not due to their facial differences, but rather their hairstyles.
Upper-class women were defined by their elaborate hairstyles, exemplified by the
woman in the bottom left-hand corner of the plate. Alongside his commentary on
the categorisation of these women into varied types, Thomson mocked the custom
of wearing such elaborate hairstyles:
with a view to avoid injuring the elaborate coiffure during sleep, the lady sup-
ports the nape of her neck upon a pillar of earthenware or wood, high enough to
protect the design from being damaged. In our land this device would imply a
sacrifice of comfort, and here and there a case of strangulation would ensue; but
no very grave objection could be raised to the novel chignon and its midnight
scaffolding, when the interests of fashion are at stake.51

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 Through the Looking Glass   · 91

Fig. 12.  John Thomson, “Male Heads, Chinese and Mongolian”, Illustrations of China and its people, ii,
plate IX, numbers 20–25. The images all measure 7½cm x 6cm on a page which measures 47cm
x34½cm. Image 20 (top) is entitled “Cantonese Boy”; 21 (middle left) “Cantonese Merchant”;
22 (middle right) “Mongolian Male Head”; 23 (middle) “A Venerable Head”; 24 (bottom left)
“A Labourer”; and 25 (bottom right) “Mongolian Male Head”. All images are separated by a thin
blank page of acid-free paper from the textual descriptions. Image courtesy of Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

In comparison, lower-class women were defined by their simplistic and practical

head dress (see the woman on bottom right-hand corner of Figure 13). Females were
classified by their dress and make-up, while men were defined by their facial types.
Both of these attributes were dependent on contemporary ideas of masculinity and
femininity. Furthermore, cosmetics and attention to physical appearance were con-
sidered by Thomson to be the “sciences” of women.52 Thomson was working under
clear preconceptions of gender difference through which he framed his classification
of Chinese and Cypriot men and women. Yet this classification was constructed and
reinforced not solely though the images themselves, but through their organisation
on the page and the text which described them.

Class

Finally, class was a powerful category of classification as it represented one of

the most important mechanisms of separation in English society. One of the most
representative examples of classification though an economic category is in a set of
portraits made in China entitled “Four heads, types of the Labouring Class” (Figure
14). In this image Thomson differentiated between older and younger, male and

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92 · Geoffrey Belknap

Fig. 13.  John Thomson, “Chinese Female Coiffure”, Illustrations of China and its people, ii, plate X,
number 26–31. The images all measure 7½cm × 6cm on a page which measures 47cm × 34½cm.
Image 26 (top) is entitled “Headdress of Cantonese Girl”; 27 (middle left) “Winter Headdress”;
28 (middle right) “Coiffure of Swatow Woman”; 29 (middle) “Coiffure of Swatow Woman”; 30
(bottom left) “Coiffure of Ningpo Woman”; and 31 (bottom right) “Coiffure of Shanghai Woman”.
All images are separated by a thin blank page of acid-free paper from the textual descriptions.
Image courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

female labourers, creating a distinct construction of physiological class types. While

this image is significant for its visual construction, the explanation of this picture
contextualises the text more firmly within Thomson’s desire to classify and utilise
the economic potential of these foreign working-class bodies. When describing the
younger male labourer in “Four heads, types of the Labouring Class”, Thomson
states: “He is a type of the coolies who used to be kidnapped and sent to the United
States, and have there left a lasting monument to their industry in the great embank-
ments of the Pacific Railroad.”53 Thomson was here clearly illustrating the imperial
motivation of the classification and appropriation of Chinese labourers: the “coolies”
were only good enough to die on the railway tracks in the Western world. These
Eastern labourers, however, were not the only people classified and dehumanised
by Thomson’s photographs.
The working class was the primary focus of Thomson’s lens in Street life in
London. Unlike China and its people, The Straits of Malacca, and Through Cyprus
with the camera, Street life in London differed in both its form and content. In his

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 Through the Looking Glass   · 93

Fig. 14. John Thomson, “Four Heads, Types of the Labouring Class”, China and its people, i, Plate XI,
numbers 23 (top left), 24 (top right), 25 (bottom left), 26 (bottom right). Each image is exactly
the same size and measures 11cm × 8½cm on a page which measures 47cm × 34½cm. All images
are separated by a thin blank page of acid-free paper from the textual descriptions. Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

other photographic books Thomson pictured landscapes, architecture, and people

and the system of classification was more varied, and included all three types of
classification that have been outlined above. In Street life in London, however, the
focus was solely on people, and the single mode of classification was class. This is
due to the fact that the major difference between the English working and middle
and upper classes were not race and gender, but economics. Unlike the classification
of faraway imperial subjects, the London working class were indistinguishable by
racial markers for the target English reading public. Instead, the London labourers
became foreign through their economic circumstances.
Thomson illustrated the difference between the London working classes and the
English middle and upper classes at the same time that he stressed the similarities
between these labourers and the working-class migrants of China. The first plate
within Street life in London highlights the migrant nature of the working class.
Attached to a picture entitled “London Nomades” (Figure 15), Thomson and Smith
state that “these people, who neither follow a regular pursuit, nor have a permanent
place of abode, form a section of urban and suburban street folks so divided and

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94 · Geoffrey Belknap

Fig. 15. John Thomson, “London Nomades”, Street life in London, 10. With permission of LSE Digital
Archive, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).

subdivided, and yet mingled into one confused whole, as to render abortive any
attempt at systematic classification”.54 Although Thomson here claimed that he could
not classify the London Nomades, he did judge them to be typical examples of the
migrant nature of the English working class. Furthermore, in the paragraph previous
to this quotation, Thomson associated the migrant nature of the London labourers
with the “roaming savages” found throughout the uncivilised world.55 Thomson was
able to visualise the English working class as foreign by doubting their economic
stability and associating them with relegated imperial subjects.
This paper ends with Street life in London because the subject matters represent the
same kind of shifting that occurred in the reading of Thomson’s other photographs
and books. While the subject matter of Street life in London brings the reader to a
local scene in the metropole, we are reminded that all of Thomson’s images were
typically read within the contexts of a book or periodical. While the geography of the
subject matter may have changed, the constructs in making the images — whether
the notion of racial, gender or economic difference — remained the same. When we
finally move back to the reading of Thomson’s books, what draws the reader’s eye is

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 Through the Looking Glass   · 95

not only the categories under which he made his images, but the emphasis on read-
ing his images in context. The production of these images starts to matter less, and
the reception of them through books and periodicals — and the stories told around
these different forms of print — become essential.

Conclusion

There is an interesting lacuna in the work on science, photography, and colonialism

in the nineteenth century. Recent work has focused on science and photography and
on photography, colonialism and anthropology in the nineteenth century independ-
ently, but there has yet to be work examining the interlocution of the capturing
and reproduction of photographs of colonial spaces and peoples within the scope
of Victorian scientific exploration, collection and analysis. This paper has been an
experiment in juxtaposing the ways in which colonial photographs moved from scenes
of exploration to spaces of analysis within the imperial centre. The intersections of
the photographic explorations of Thomson and the project of manufacturing and
maintaining an imperial gaze in the late nineteenth century through modes of textual
and visual print production are inherently connected processes.
Thomson’s articulation of colonial spaces, places and people was articulated
through a constructed imperial gaze which gained its significance not in the images
themselves, but in their re-inscription in the commercial space of the photographic
travel narrative. Through his books, Thomson was able to visually and textually
categorise various peoples and landscapes into racial, economic and gender types
that moved beyond traditional notions of classification. This classification, while not
new or unique in the period, was significant for the ways in which photographs were
utilised to reinforce these boundaries of difference. Through the camera, the foreign
was brought home and the local was made foreign. This short exploration of Thom-
son’s photographic narratives has aimed to juxtapose forms of colonial exploration
and analysis within the constructs of nineteenth-century imperial expansion. Through
this juxtaposition, we can see that Thomson’s intervention of the photographic camera
with the textual inscription of the travel narrative constructed a unique conception
of the English Empire.

references

1.  John Thomson, Illustrations of China and its people: A series of two hundred photographs with
letterpress descriptive of the places and people represented, i (London, 1874), Introduction.
2.  For recent examples see Grace Lau, Picturing the Chinese: Early Western photographs and postcards
of China (San Francisco, 2008), and James R. Ryan, Picturing place: Photography and the
geographical imagination (London, 2003).
3.  Thomson was both connected to and aware of continental science. In 1876 he translated the French
popular scientist, balloonist and photographer Gaston Tissandier’s A history and handbook of
photography (London, 1876), into English.
4. Kelley Wilder, Photography and science (London, 2009), 3.
5.  Jennifer Tucker, Nature exposed: Photography as eyewitness in Victorian science (Baltimore, 2005).

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96 · Geoffrey Belknap

6.  Elizabeth Edwards, Raw histories: Photographs, anthropology and museums (Oxford, 2001), 16.
7.  Christopher Pinney, Camera indica: The social life of Indian photographs (London, 1997); Christopher
Pinney, The coming of photography in India (London, 2008).
8.  There has been a large interest in photography and colonialism recently, which this paper builds on. In
particular see Krista Thompson, An eye for the Tropics: Tourism, photography, and framing the
Caribbean picturesque (Durham, 2006); Chris Pinney, Photography and anthropology (London,
2011); Steve Edwards, Photography: A very short introduction (Oxford, 2006).
9.  Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London, 1998), 97.
10.  Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York, 1979), 4.
11.  For an examination of visual culture and post-colonial theory, see the anthologies by Eleanor M. Hight
and Gary D. Sampson (eds), Colonialist photography: Imag(in)ing Race and place (London,
2002); Joan M. Schwartz and James R. Ryan. Picturing place: Photography and the geographical
imagination (London, 2003); Jill Beaulieu and Mary Roberts, Orientalism’s interlocutors:
Painting, architecture and photography (Durham, 2002); and Tim Barringer, Geoff Quilley,
and Douglas Fordham, “Introduction” in Art in the British Empire, ed. by Tim Barringer, Geoff
Quilley and Douglas Fordham (Manchester, 2007), 1–19.
12.  E. Ann Kaplan, Looking for the other: Feminism, film and the Imperial gaze (London, 1997), 4.
13. Loomba, op. cit. (ref. 9), 97.
14.  See Richard Ovenden’s introduction to John Thomson, China and its people in early photographs:
An unabridged reprint of the classic 1873/4 work (New York, 1982), p. xiv. Also see Richard
Ovenden, John Thomson (1837–1921) photographer (Edinburgh, 1997).
15. Ulrike Hillemann has pointed out that conceptions of China by England underwent significant change
in the nineteenth century, moving from a conception of the east as a benevolent country to emulate
in the eighteenth and turn of the nineteenth century, to a morally corrupt and cruel nation in the
nineteenth century, and especially by the first opium war. Thomson’s pictures therefore reflect
this late nineteenth-century construction of the Orient. See Ulrike Hillemann, Asian Empire
and British knowledge: China and the networks of British imperial expansion (London, 2009).
16.  For example, the photograph directly beside “The Cangue” is “The Cage Punishment” and shows a
prisoner locked in a bamboo cage. John Thomson, Illustrations of China and its people: A series
of two hundred photographs with letterpress descriptive of the places and people represented,
iii (London, 1874), plate VI, no. 14.
17. Hillemann, op. cit. (ref. 15), 56.
18. Ryan, op. cit. (ref. 2), 165.
19.  For a discussion of the various reproductive techniques and their uses, see Bamber Gascoigne, How
to identify prints (London, 2004).
20.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), 363–4.
21. Henry Mayhew, London labour and London poor (London, 1851).
22.  John Thomson and Adolphe Smith, Street life in London (New York, 1969). Mayhew published a
book of photographic images of London in 1861–62 which visualised the working class through
ethnological tropes of racial difference. Thomson and Smith’s photographs of London worked
similarly to group vagrant and working subcultures of London along racial and class boundaries.
For a more in-depth discussion of Mayhew’s work, see Sadiah Qureshi, “Glimpsing the urban
savage”, in Performing race: Exhibitions, empire and anthropology in nineteenth-century Britain
(Chicago, 2010).
23.  Jennifer Tucker, “Photography as witness, detective, and impostor: Visual representation in Victorian
science”, in Victorian science in context, ed. by Bernard Lightman (Chicago, 1997), 386.
24.  While it is beyond the scope of this paper, an analysis of Thomson’s participation in the RGS, both
through the presentations he gave on his travels at RGS meetings and later as the first lecturer

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 Through the Looking Glass   · 97
in photography, would help position the reproduction of Thomson’s images and photographic
epistemology outside of the area of print.
25.  James R. Ryan, “Imperial landscapes: Photography, geography and British overseas exploration”,
Geography and imperialism: 1840–1920, ed. by Morag Bell et al. (Manchester, 1995), 69.
26.  For a detailed discussion of how geographical discourses were a product of and a companion to
imperial expansion, see Ryan, op. cit. (ref. 2).
27.  Felix Driver, Geography militant: Cultures of exploration and empire (Oxford, 2001), 9.
28.  Tucker, op. cit. (ref. 5), 4.
29. Ryan, op. cit. (ref. 2), 163.
30.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), plate 4.
31.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), 189.
32.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), 188–9.
33.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), i, plate xx. Note that the notion of picturesque again is used to define this
street.
34.  Fa-ti Fan, British naturalists in Qing China: Science, empire, and cultural encounter (Cambridge,
Harvard), 2004, 4–5.
35.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 14), 10.
36.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), 9.
37.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 14), 14.
38. Preface to The Graphic, iv, July–December 1871, p. v.
39.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), Preface.
40.  Elizabeth Edwards, op. cit. (ref. 6).
41. Reproducing part of a photograph was a common occurrence within the illustrated press, but did not
compromise the visual integrity of the image. According to Gascoigne, the mixing of reproduction
methods and source material was a common technique for engravers to attain the best picture
quality. See Gascoigne, op. cit. (ref. 19), 29.
42.  The Graphic, vii, no. 163, 11 January 1873, 35.
43.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), i, plate IV.
44.  See introduction to Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), viii.
45. Ryan, op. cit. (ref. 2), 163.
46.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), plate 16.
47.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), plate 16.
48.  Jennifer Green-Lewis, Framing the Victorians: Photography and the culture of realism (Ithaca,
1996), 4.
49.  Green-Lewis, op. cit. (ref. 48), 4.
50.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), ii, plate IX.
51.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), i, plate X.
52.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), i, plate IV.
53.  Thomson, op. cit. (ref. 1), i, plate XI.
54.  Thomson and Smith, op. cit. (1969), 9.
55.  Thomson and Smith, op. cit. (1969), 9.

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