Capturing a World: China and Its People—Photography by John Thomson
捕捉世界：约翰•汤姆森所摄的中国和中国人

Today, using a camera to record people’s lives is commonplace; but in the nineteenth century, the idea was revolutionary. John Thomson, a groundbreaking Scottish photographer, traveled to the Far East at the beginning of 1868, and used his camera to document the diverse people and places he encountered throughout China. Thomson traveled over four thousand miles burdened with glass plates, several large wooden box-type cameras, lenses, tripods, a complete chest of chemicals, and a portable light-proof tent that was big enough to house his entire darkroom paraphernalia. The Chinese he encountered in his travels often called Thomson a foreign devil. Nevertheless, he left China with over 1,200 glass negatives and went on to publish five related books of photography. This exhibition presented over seventy rarely-seen large-format, sepia-toned prints of Thomson’s works. The works were published with narrative text based on his writings, which recorded the customs, monuments, occupations, and appearances of ordinary Chinese people.