Four Heads, Types of the Labouring Class
c. 1868
Medium
Collotype, pl. XI from the album "Illustrations of China and its People, Volume I" (1873)
Dimensions
Each image: 11.3 × 8.8 cm (4 1/2 × 3 1/2 in.); Album page: 47 × 35 cm (18 9/16 × 13 13/16 in.)
Classification
photography
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
236389
Art Historical Context
In the late 1860s, Scottish photographer John Thomson ventured into China during a transformative era of Western exploration and colonial interest in Asia. *Four Heads, Types of Labouring Class* (c. 1868), plate XI from his seminal album *Illustrations of and its People, Volume* (1873), captures intimate portraits of four working-class Chinese individuals. Each headshot, measuring just 11.3 × 8.8 cm on a grander 47 × 35 cm album page, exemplifies Thomson's ethnographic approach, documenting "types" of everyday people with a keen eye for human dignity amid rapid social change. Printed as a col...
About the Artist
John Thomson · 1837–1921
John Thomson (1837–1921), a pioneering Scottish photographer, was born on 14 June 1837 in Edinburgh as the eighth of nine children to William Thomson, a tobacco spinner and trader, and Isabella Newlands.) After schooling in the early 1850s, he apprenticed with a local optical and scientific instrument manufacturer, where he mastered the principles of photography, completing his training around 185...