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John Thompson
John Thompson, who studied Chemistry at Edinburgh University, was born in 1837. One could easily say that he was the hero of photography in Scotland. As a photographer he did a lot of work in the Far East. He was fascinated by the culture, people and the landscape in that area. It was while John settled in China in 1867-68 that he started to document the cultural aspect of the Chinese people. He was most drawn to huge diversity that is embedded into the Chinese people, comparing to the life that he had left behind in Europe.
During his work in the Far East, China to be specific, John had travelled some rugged terrain as some of these areas were either not or partially populated. Even though he focus a lot on the cultural aspect of China, did some landscape and architectural photography. One of his most famous landscape image is one he took while on the River Min which is entitled Island Pagoda. There isn't a most outstanding work form John Thompson, as looking at his work for me, each era has great work that stood out from other images that he had taken and from other photographers as well.
While doing this project, I wondered if John Thompson and other photographers of his time would appreciate modern photography or would they be irate at the manipulations that there are? To think that all they had was the big box camera and not to mention the heavy tripod. John Thompson didn't have long rage zoom like what we are accustomed to today: to get many of his shots while doing street photography, he would ask someone if he photograph them and then embarrassingly odious task of setting up his tripod. Again that wouldn't be a problem for most of his subjects especially those that he photograph in the Far East region, as they would've been just as curios to see what their picture would be like.
Among The six hundred (600) glass plate (or negatives), he also left as a legacy between 1868-98 of eight other publications. It is through these legacies that has inspire myself and others into victorian photography. For myself, Victorian photography cannot be replace but can only be added to.
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Plan a street photography or social documentary project and either go out and photograph for the project, or take some "recce" shots.
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Blog about how you found the project.