Street Life in London. With Permanent Photographic Illustrations Taken from Life Expressly for this Publication
Thomson. Thomson, J. & Adolphe Smith
London. Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington. 1877
Sold
First edition in the variant green publisher's binding.
Thomson's photographs in 'Street Life in London' and the commentary upon the images by Thomson and Adolphe Smith, depict a London in which life is a harsh and continuous struggle. The characters on view here are familiar to us more from Dickens' novels or from an idea of the Whitechapel of Jack the Ripper than from any nostalgic image of a strait-laced or patrician Victorianism. Each image is accompanied by descriptive text, so for the frontispiece 'London Nomades', Thomson begins 'In his savage state...man is fain to wander, seeking his sustenance in the fruits of the earth or products of the chase', a remark that appears to be the introduction to a work of natural history (which in many ways this is) rather than a documentary record of the street life of Victorian London. Thomson and Smith are, however, sympathetic to the objects of their study and seem intent on cataloguing the variety of types to be found rather than attempting any Barnum-like freakshow. As Thomson himself writes: 'The precision and accuracy of photography enables us to present true types of the London poor and shield us from the accusation of either underrating or exaggerating individual peculiarities of appearance'.
'Street Life in London ... constitutes the first photographic social documentation of any kind.' (Gernsheim - The History of Photography pg. 447).
Thomson's photographs in 'Street Life in London' and the commentary upon the images by Thomson and Adolphe Smith, depict a London in which life is a harsh and continuous struggle. The characters on view here are familiar to us more from Dickens' novels or from an idea of the Whitechapel of Jack the Ripper than from any nostalgic image of a strait-laced or patrician Victorianism. Each image is accompanied by descriptive text, so for the frontispiece 'London Nomades', Thomson begins 'In his savage state...man is fain to wander, seeking his sustenance in the fruits of the earth or products of the chase', a remark that appears to be the introduction to a work of natural history (which in many ways this is) rather than a documentary record of the street life of Victorian London. Thomson and Smith are, however, sympathetic to the objects of their study and seem intent on cataloguing the variety of types to be found rather than attempting any Barnum-like freakshow. As Thomson himself writes: 'The precision and accuracy of photography enables us to present true types of the London poor and shield us from the accusation of either underrating or exaggerating individual peculiarities of appearance'.
'Street Life in London ... constitutes the first photographic social documentation of any kind.' (Gernsheim - The History of Photography pg. 447).
pp. 100. 4to. Title, list of plates and thirty-seven monochrome Woodburytype photographs with guardleaves (one plate 'Clapham Common Industries' has two photographs), each mounted on card within a red border with title in red. Original green cloth, with gilt title and elaborate gilt pictorial decoration including gilt figures from 'Covent Garden Flower Women' and 'the London Boardmen', title gilt to spine, a.e.g.
#35371
