Thomson, John

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

John Thomson was a Scottish photographer who worked during the later 19th and early 20th century. He interests me a lot because he was one of the first photographers to live and travel in Southeast Asia and China. He's also considered to be one of the first social documentary photographers. I was thinking about his photographs a lot when I was travelling through the Cambodian countryside. I remember being struck with the realization that most of the houses and roads and landscapes look, today, exactly like they do in Thomson's photographs of that part of the world, which were made over a hundred years ago. The only difference was the occasional piece of delapidated farm equipment or motobike sitting around. Besides that, it was as deep and complete of a timewarp as I've ever experienced.