PHOTOGRAPHS FROM PENANG &c. by John Thomson. An album of 40 albumen photographs by John Thomson

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM PENANG &c. by John Thomson. An album of 40 albumen photographs by John Thomson from the 1860s, half of them captioned to mount. Quarto sized bespoke album bound in crushed burgundy morocco with 'Photographs Penang &c.' in gilt to upper cover, decoration in gilt, blind and black, two clasps, lightly rubbed. Internally textured endpaper and a single page of letterpress: Photographs from Penang' with 14 photos titled on recto and no. 15-26 in manuscript on verso - another 14 photographs are not indexed. Some soiling to album leaves. The 40 large albumen photographs are mounted to album pages in both portrait and landscape format, two of them being divided across a pair of pages, panorama style. The album begins with an oval landscape format 26.5 x 20.5cm image titled in manuscript on the album leaf 'No. 1. Penang from the Hill. Photo Thomson. Penang' continuing with images of 'Malay Huts', 26.5x21cm, beach huts at Penang, 'Native Types. The Fruit Stall', 'Chinese Coolies Breakfasting', 'Burmese Temple', 'The "Spoul" halting place', 'No 23 The Prangin River at low water' (particularly fine contrast), a mountain pass and waterfall over two pages, a double-page photograph of a city, Penang? The photographs in the second half of the book are generally not annotated with titles to the album leaf. John Thomson first visited south east Asia in 1861 with camera in tow, returning in 1863 where he developed a documentary style which focussed on naturalistic subjects, especially those of ethnographic and topographical interest. After returning to England in 1866 he used his photographs to illustrate a series of books (Est. plus 17.5% premium) (Illustrated)