WC&Co.
1865
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
23.3 × 33.8 cm (9 3/16 × 13 5/16 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Cynthia Hazen Polsky Gift, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.583 (86a)
Tags
Art Historical Context
John Thomson's *WC&Co.* (1865) is a striking albumen silver print from glass negative, measuring 23.3 × 33.8 cm, now housed in the Metropolitan Museum Art's Gilman Collection. Produced during photography's explosive growth in the mid-19th century, this medium—using egg-white albumen to bind light-sensitive silver salts to paper—delivered the era's sharpest details and richest tonal range. Thomson, a pioneering Scottish photographer known for his documentary work in Asia and London street life, captured this image with meticulous clarity, highlighting the medium's role in democratizing portrait...
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...