John Thomson

Scottish photographer and geographer John Thomson (14 June 1837, Edinburgh – 29 Sept. 1921, Edinburgh) was a pioneer in photographying the ruins of Angkor in 1866, part of his ten-year long travel stint across Asia after joining his elder brother William in Singapore in 1862.

When he left for the Far East, he had studied photography processing and technique as an apprentice in an optical and scientific device manufacturing company, while enrolling to evening classes at Watts Institution and School of Arts to study chemistry, philosophy and geography.

Thomson was welcomed at the Court of Siam in 1865, and then to Phnom Penh Royal Palace the following year. After Cochinchina and Indochina, he traveled around China, documenting local cultures, landscapes and artefacts of the East. He insisted to travel to Angkor, with the assistance of his friend H.G. Kennedy [whom we can see on a few photographs taken by Thomson in Angkor], a British Consulate officer fluent in Siamese, after reading Henri Mouhot​’s travel account, first published in English even if Mouhot was a French citizen.

According to Jim Mizerski in Cambodia Captured, ​“On January 27, 1866, John Thomson accompanied by H. G. (Henry George) Kennedy left Bangkok on his way to Angkor. His departure was noted in the Bangkok Recorder:

Mr. Thomson, the photographer who has been residing in Bangkok approximately three months, departed last Saturday, 11th day of the waxing moon in the third month, headed for Cambodia, to the ancient city of Angkor, wishing to photograph those ancient artifacts for the European people to see. Mister Thomson went by land, not by way of Chanthaburi. He expects to return in two months. During those two months anyone wishing to see the photographs taken in Bangkok may do so. The photographs are with Captain Ames, Commander of the Police, whose home is at Pom Pongpajamid. The king praised Mr. Thomson as a truly excellent photographer. I agree that none can compare to him.

In The Straits of Malacca, John Thomson recorded the start of his Cambodian adventure:

We had first intended to sail down the Gulf of Siam to Chantaboon, and thence to cross over the forest-clad mountains of that province to Battabong. But the Siamese Government declined to grant a passport for that route, which they reported as dangerous and impracticable. We were therefore reduced to the necessity of making a tedious, and, so far as health was concerned, more dangerous journey by the creeks and rivers, and across the hot plains and marshes of the south-eastern provinces of the interior.

Thomson’s original plan to follow a shortened version of Henri Mouhot’s route was not possible and his adventure in Cambodia was to be uniquely his own. There is nothing to suggest that Thomsen’s plan, at least at the time he left Bangkok, included traveling to Phnom Penh and Kampot, which he later did. 

Thomson set his own photographic studio in Bangkok, which he operated until mid-1867, leaving for China and contributing to the London Illustrated News and The China Magazine. 

After his Asian period, he worked on the street people of London, developing a style of social documentary viewed as the historic basis of modern photojournalism. Yet he was at ease in all strata of society, to the point that he became portrait photographer of the Mayfair High Society, with a Royal Warrant granted to him in 1881. He had a great impact on his contemporaries, for instance introducing the famous travel writer Isabella Lucy Bird to the art of photography.

Like most pioneer photographers, John Thomson rarely took photos of himself. This one was taken by accident during a street life photoshoot in China, 1871. [Wellcome Collection].

(photo Cambodia News English)

Publications

• “Enlargements from Small Negatives.“The British Journal of Photography 14 (348), 1867 : 3;  14 (349), 1867: 13 – 14.
• The Antiquities of Cambodia: A Series of Photographs Taken on the Spot;
  With Letterpress Description. Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1867.
• The Straits of Malacca, Indo-China and China or, Ten Years’ Travels,
  Adventures, and Residence Abroad. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low & Searle, 1875. | FR Dix ans de voyages dans la Chine et l’Indo-Chine, Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1877.
• Publications in The China Magazine, C. Langdon Davies (ed.), 4 vols, Hong Kong, 1868 – 70.
   

More about John Thomson

• A short online biography by the National Library of Scotland.
• Stephen White, John Thomson: A Window to the Orient. New York,
  NY: Thames & Hudson, 1985.
• Richard Ovenden, John Thomson (1837 – 1921): Photographer, Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland, 1997.
• Joel Montague & Jim Mizerski, John Thomson: The Early Years – In Search of the Orient, Bangkok: White Lotus, 2014.
• Paisarn Piemmettawat (ed.), Narisa Chakrabongse (trsl.), Siam Through the Lenses of John Thomson 1865 – 1866, Bangkok, River Books, 2015, repr. 2018, 147 p. ISBN 9786167339511. 
• Jim Mizerski, Cambodia Captured: Angkor’s First Photographers in 1860’s Colonial Intrigues, Phnom Penh: Jasmine Image Machine, 2016.
• Terry Bennett, History of Photography in China: Western Photographers 1861 – 1879, London, Bernard Quaritch, 2017. 
• Joachim Bautze, ​“August Sachtler and John Thomson Photographing Siam, 1865 – 1866”, in Decoding Southeast Asian Art, Studies in Honor of Piriya Krairiksh, Narisa Chakrabongse (publs.), Bangkok, River Books, 2022: 354 – 69. ISBN 9786164510661.
• Rosalind C. Morris, ​“Photography and the Power of Images in the History of Power: Notes from Thailand”, in Rosalind C. Morris, Photographies East: The Camera and Its Histories in East and Southeast Asia, Duke University Press, 2009, 313 p. ISBN 9780822342052.