John Thomson
1869
Manchu lady and child [Beijing]

Glass photonegative, wet collodion, stereograph
Wellcome Collection
System no..b11775282, Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) terms and conditions, ttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
 
Manchu lady and child. Bears Thomson's negative number: "701"
 
A woman with an elaborate hairstyle, and a child, standing on a fine carpet in front of a plain screen in the open air. The child is holding a flower. The setting is the same as Thomson's negative 708. The woman and the child face one other in front of a screen inside a courtyard. The woman wears a beautiful silk robe. They are photographed at full length in part because Thomson wanted to show that 'the full robes of a Chinese lady or gentleman of the better classes are highly picturesque, and remarkable also for the richness and beauty of their materials'
 
LL/86642