Background
John Thomson was born in 1837 in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. Thomson was born the eighth of nine children.
John Thomson was born in 1837 in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. Thomson was born the eighth of nine children.
He attended Edinburgh University, where he studied chemistry.
Thomson spent between five and ten years in the Far East, which he left in 1865. He established a studio in London and did some teaching of photography as well as publishing a short-lived periodical, Street Life of London (1877-78), with Adolphe Smith. With his reputation as an important photographer well established, Thomson opened a portrait studio in Buckingham Palace Road in 1879, later moving it to Mayfair. In 1881 he was appointed photographer to the British Royal Family by Queen Victoria, and his later work concentrated on studio portraiture of the rich and famous of High Society, giving him a comfortable living.
Primarily noted as one of the earliest social documentarians, Thomson's series of photographs illustrating the working class made Street Life in London the first published social documentary illustrated with photographs. Working with collodion wet plates and albumen prints, he also documented much of life in the Far East.
He was elected a member of the Photographic Society, later the Royal Photographic Society, on 11 November 1879. Thomson was a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society from about 1866 until his death.
William Thomson was a tobacco spinner and retail trader.
In London, Thomson renewed his acquaintance with Adolphe Smith, a radical journalist whom he had met at the Royal Geographical Society in 1866. Together they collaborated in producing the monthly magazine, Street Life in London, from 1876 to 1877.
