Thomas Child (photographer)

Thomas Child, "Great Wall with Gate, Badaling", 1870s, albumen silver print. Source: Stephan Loewentheil Photography of China Collection

Thomas Child (1841–1898) was an English photographer and engineer best known for his pioneering photography work in China.[1] Child produced a large body of photographs during his time in Beijing in the 1870s and 1880s, a time when virtually no other photographers operated in the city.[2] During the two decades he spent in China, Child compiled the earliest comprehensive photographic catalogue of the customs, architecture, and people of late Qing dynasty Beijing.[3] A keen photographer of architecture, some of Child's images are among the earliest[4] and the only known photographic records of their architectural subjects.[5]

  1. ^ Bennett, Terry. History of Photography in China, Western Photographers 1861–1879. London: Bernard Quaritch Lt. pp. 56–78.
  2. ^ Pezzati, Alessandro (2017). "Early Photographs of China". Expedition Magazine. Vol. 59, no. 3. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
  3. ^ Epstein, Emily Ann (22 September 2016). "Before Beijing: A Rare View of China's Last Dynasty". The Atlantic. Retrieved 8 October 2020.
  4. ^ Thiriez, Regine (17 May 2019). Barbarian Lens, Western Photographers of the Qianlong Emperor's European Palaces. Routledge. ISBN 978-1138002234.
  5. ^ Yuan, Feng; Mingzhi, Wang, eds. (2018). Vision and Reflection: Photographs of China in the 19th Century from the Loewentheil Collection. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press. p. 175. ISBN 978-7-302-51668-2.