Now in the fourth year of its world tour, the exhibition Through the Lens of John Thomson will be on display through next February at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum. The curator Betty Yao (director of Credential International Arts Management) has put together a selection of rare photographs taken by Thomson in Hong Kong and other places along the Chinese coast.
The Scottish photographer John Thomson (1837-1921) was a pioneer of photojournalism at the end of the 19th century. His travels in Asia began in 1862, and he opened his commercial photography studio in Hong Kong in 1868. Although his studio was located in what was then a British colony, Thomson visited parts of China that were still inaccessible to foreigners. In the four years after opening his studio, Thomson traveled nearly 8,000 kilometers, from Guangdong and Fujian to Beijing and northeast of the Blue River.
One must not forget the difficulty of such a journey at that time. Far from today’s cameras that fit in our pockets and can take an unlimited amount of pictures, the techniques in the 1870s were still unstable and the equipment was bulky and difficult to handle. But these difficulties didn’t discourage Thomson, who photographed a wide variety of subjects, from ethnography to antiques, beggars to princes, palaces to monasteries, villages to large rivers. He was one of the first Westerners to photograph Beijing and its surrounding areas, including famous historical sites like the Great Wall of China and the tombs of the emperors of the Ming Dynasty.
Although little known today, John Thomson was a leading authority on China at the end of the 19th century. His photographs were popular on the Chinese and international markets, where depictions of “exotic” places like China fetched high prices. They appeared in publications at the time like China Magazine, and were included in his book Through China with a Camera, which he published upon his return to London in 1898. Through his photographs, he was able to raise awareness in the West about the culture and people of China.
This exhibition complements the 2010 monograph China: Through the Lens of John Thomson, 1868-1872, made possible through the commendable research conducted by the team of the Wellcome Collection in London, which holds many of the artist’s photographs. The photographs on display are reproductions printed from original negatives glass plates, also a part of the Wellcome Collection.
Through the Lens of John Thomson : Hong Kong and Coastal China (1868-1872)
23 November 2013 – 16 February 2014
Hong Kong Maritime Museum
Central Ferry Pier No. 8
Hong Kong
T: +852 3713 2500
[email protected]
http://www.hkmaritimemuseum.org
