1216
a Kodak exhibition in 1897, they gave considerable
encouragement to the general public to take up the
medium as a popular hobby.
Frances Dimond
See also: Victoria, Queen and Albert, Prince
Consort; Royal Photographic Society; Fenton, Roger;
Rejlander, Oscar Gustav; Price, William Lake;
Rosling, Alfred; and Mayall, John Jabez Edwin.
Further Reading
Gernsheim, Helmut and Alison, Queen Victoria. A Biography
in Word and Picture, London: Longmans, Green & Co. Ltd.,
1959.
Gernsheim, Helmut and Alison, Edward VII and Queen Alex-
andra. A Biography in Word and Picture, London: Frederick
Muller, 1962.
Happy and Glorious. Six Reigns of Royal Photography. Edited
by Colin Ford. London: Angus & Robertson, 1977.
Dimond, Frances and Taylor, Roger, Crown and Camera: The
Royal Family and Photography. 1842–1910. London: Penguin
Books Ltd., 1987.
Dimond, Frances, “Photographers, Royal”; “Royal Photograph
Collection.” The Royal Encyclopedia. Edited by Ronald Al-
lison and Sarah Riddell. London: Macmillan Press, 1991.
Dimond, Frances and Taylor, Roger, “Photographic Portraits,”
The Royal Encyclopedia, edited by Ronald Allison and Sarah
Riddell. London: Macmillan Press, 1991.
Dimond, Frances, Presenting an Image. London: Merrell Hol-
berton, 1995.
Dimond, Frances, Developing the Picture. Queen Alexandra and
the Art of Photography. London: Royal Collection Enterprises
Ltd., 2004.
ROYAL ENGINEERS
The British Army’s Corps of Royal Engineers was prob-
ably the fi rst military unit to receive formal instruction
in photography. Between 1854 and 1855 a small number
of Sappers were trained on an ad hoc basis by civilian
photographers in order to capture scenes of the Crimean
War and to reduce maps and plans for the Ordinance
Survey. In 1856 the War Department appointed Charles
Thurston Thompson (1816–1868), Superintendent of
Photography at the South Kensington (later Victoria
and Albert) Museum, to train the Corp’s non-commis-
sioned offi cers in the wet-plate process. On receiving
their certifi cate of competency, they were despatched to
companies stationed overseas, from Greece to India and
China, to document work in progress and make topo-
graphical and ethnographical pictures. Often working
under inhospitable conditions they produced the earliest
signifi cant bodies of photographs of many little known
places and cultures. They painstakingly recorded from
the crest of the Rocky Mountains westwards along the
49 th Parallel to the Pacifi c coast for the US/Canada
Border Survey from 1858–62, and the 400 mile jour-
ney inland from Zula, Eritrea to Magdala during the
Abyssinian expedition of 1868. By the1860s photog-
raphy was offered as an optional course at the School
of Telegraphy at the Royal Engineers Establishment
at Chatham. Captain (later Sir) William de Wiveleslie
Abney (1843–1920) established a separate Chemical and
Photographic School there in 1874 which was absorbed
into the Survey School in 1904.
Anne-Marie EzeROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY
The world through a lensNo expedition ... can be considered complete without
photography to place on record the geographical and
ethnological features of the Journey.
John Thomson RGS Offi cial Instructor in Photography
1885.Photographs of Exploration
Today the Royal Geographical Society is today home to
a remarkable collection of over 500,000 19th and early
20th century photographs. This collection was built up
through the donation of photographs taken by many
travellers, geographers and explorers. In addition, the
growing importance the Society attached to photogra-
phy during the Victorian period is in part due to John
Thomson who in 1886 became the RGS’s Instructor of
Photography. He has recently undertaken photographic
travels in China and Cambodia (alongside his celebrated
collaboration with the journalist Adolphe Smith Street
life in London 1878) and it was under his instruction
that many RGS Fellows set of to photograph the furthest
reaches of the known world.
Such work helped to underpin the use of the cam-
era—alongside the sextant, compass and sketchpad—as
an essential part of any explorer’s equipment. While
the aesthetic nature of photography was ever present
there was burgeoning interest in its application for the
scientifi c documentation and recording of the world.
As Thompson noted “the faithfulness of such pictures
affords the nearest approach that can be made towards
placing the reader actually before the scene which is
represented.”Photography’s New Place in Exploration
Throughout the Victorian period expeditions continued
to be documented both through existing forms—such
as the sketch pad and oil paints—alongside the recent
introduction of the camera. The tensions between these
two forms can in part be seen in David Livingstone’s
Zambezi expedition 1858–64.
Livingstone was accompanied by his brother
Charles—who was the expedition’s photographer—