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‘Francis Chit & Co’ (later & Sons). He was skilled in
wet-collodion work and made numerous portraits, views
and records of events including a large panorama of
Bangkok in 1864. In early 1862 Isidore van Kinsbergen
(1821–1905) the offi cial photographer accompanying a
Dutch delegation visiting from Batavia, made a range
of views, portraits and studies of antiquities. Wilhelm
Burger (1844–1920) a professional photographer at-
tached to the Austrian diplomatic and trade mission
was briefl y in Bangkok in May 1869. He later marketed
stereoviews of his travels to Vietnam and Japan. Fran-
cis Chit & Co photographs were regularly bought by
visitors but most ended up uncredited when shown or
reproduced in Europe.
A number of ambitious artists also went to Southeast
Asia;. John Thompson (1837– 1921) after his fi rst few
years as a photographer based in Singapore in 1861–
1864, transformed into a freelance ‘travel’ photographer
and set off for Bangkok where in 1865 he photographed
King Mongkut and his court as well as other subjects
before travelling to his real goal—the fabled Angkor Wat
temple complex in Cambodia in early 1866.
Chit and Co outlasted foreign competitors attracted
to Bangkok such as Henry Schuren who visited from
Singapore in 1874 and gained a Royal ‘Appointment’ (it
was never an exclusive honour) then set up in Bangkok
in 1876 but was replaced in 1879 by G.R. Lambert from
the fl ourishing Singapore fi rm, who made a lengthy visit
to Bangkok that year. British photographer William K.
Loftus worked in Bangkok from 1887–1891 but his
work was rather dull.
Increasingly from the 1860s illustrated magazines
used photographs as the basis for illustrations and
received images and stories from ‘world tours’ under-
taken by a broader range of travellers facilitated by
the improved travel routes and methods, modelled in
some cases on the new ‘Royal tours’ undertaken by
European and Asian kings and courtiers. Populist il-
lustrated traveller’s tales also fl ourished. The buoyant
young French attaché Ludovic, Comte de Beauvoir
for example, collected photographs assiduously in
1865–1867 on a tour with a French Royal, and used
these as the basis for illustrations in his best selling
books which began in 1869, with Java, Siam, Canton :
voyage autour du monde.
Burma [Myanmar]
After three Anglo-Burmese Wars beginning in 1824,
from 1886 north and south Burma were conquered and
administered as part of British India. The last Burmese
Kings, Mindon and Thebaw (prior to his exile in 1886)
were photographed and later had court photographers
but no daguerreotypes are known and the earliest extant
photography in Burma is connected to British military
expeditions. In 1853 East India Company Surgeon John
MacCosh (1805–1885) an experienced amateur photog-
rapher, made views and ethnographic portraits while on
duty in Burma during the Second Anglo-Burmese War
but his work had limited circulation. By contrast, in 1855
Captain Linnaeus Tripe (1822–1902) posted from Ma-
dras as the offi cial photographer to the well equipped In-
dian Government diplomatic mission to King Mindon’s
remote northern court at Ava. Tripe executed some 200
large paper negatives which concentrating on structures
and topography, have an eerie empty stillness and were
used as the basis for illustrations in the offi cial Narrative
of the expedition of 1858. More impressive and infl uen-
tial were the massive 120 image portfolios of original
prints published under Tripe’s authority in 1858 by the
Madras Government. Major Williams an engineer and
amateur photographer, accompanied the Edward Bosc
Sladen expedition through Burma to China in 1868.
Military training in photography was also the path to
a new vocation for J. Jackson (with fellow Private Bent-
ley) who established a long running and prolifi c studio
in Rangoon in 1865. Not all newcomers were British.
The German professional photographer Philip Klier
(1845–1911) began work in 1871 in Moulmein, lower
Burma then at Rangoon where he was in partnership
with J. Jackson in 1885–1890. His output was high in
quality and extensive and represents the consolidation of
the mass-market views trade over the 1880s–1890s—a
world wide trend.
Lieutenant-Colonel Willoughby Wallace Hooper
(1837–1912) on the British Expeditionary Force during
the Third Burmese War produced a set of one hundred
images in 1887 which he declared ‘were taken entirely
for his own amusement and from love of the art’ as did
Colonel Robert Graham (1838–1918) with his photo-
graphically illustrated book on the War released in 1887.
Captain-Surgeon Arthur George Newland (1857–1924)
published his The image of war, or Service on the Chin
Hills with fi ne gravures in 1894.
Perhaps the earlier Burmese War publications
scotched the plans of the Italian born Felice Beato
(1825–1907) who arrived in Rangoon in 1886. He had
made a name in war photography in India in 1858 and
China in 1860 and for his prolifi c Japanese scenes and
types over his long years there in the 1860s–1870s.
Beato stayed on and set up a studio in Mandalay pro-
ducing some war related scenes and studio tableaux
of Burmese Beauties. He also travelled into the inner
region and produced a substantial but now lesser-known
body of work. By 1895, Beato had expanded into a quite
large photography, furniture and artefacts manufacturing
and postcard business. He employed a number of local
photographers including in particular H.N. Samuels who
wife and daughter apparently modelled local costumes
in the Beato studio portraits of local ‘types.’