The Harbour, Hong-Kong
c. 1868
Medium
Collotype, pl. III from the album "Illustrations of China and its People, Volume I" (1873)
Dimensions
Image: 20.4 × 28.7 cm (8 1/16 × 11 5/16 in.); Album page: 35 × 47.1 cm (13 13/16 × 18 9/16 in.)
Classification
photography
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
236381
Art Historical Context
Step into the vibrant world of1860s Hong Kong with *The Harbour, Hong-Kong by John Thomson, a Scottish photographer and explorer. Captured around 1868 during Thomson's extensive travels through China, this image is plate III from his groundbreaking album *Illustrations of and its People, Volume*, published in 1873. As one of the first Western photographers to document everyday life in Asia with such depth, Thomson offered Victorian audiences rare glimpses into a rapidly changing empire, amid British colonial expansion following the Opium Wars. Rendered as a collotype—a precise photomechanical...
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...