Taiwan: a roadside shrine. Photograph by John Thomson, 1869.

A shrine constructed between the divergent trunk of a large tree, a pool behind. A boy sitting on the roots of the tree

In Victorian times, Europeans had developed a taste for exotic scenes – for landscapes as well as for people in faraway places. But the photographer JohnThomson was not interested in producing just 'lifeless charts of the mechanical proportions of nature'. A number of his landscape photographs of China, Taiwan and South East Asia show inherent atheistic or materialistic qualities in his work as well as the human and spiritual dimensions behind each scene. In this photograph the enormous tree and small roadside shrine are brought alive by each other’s presence, and they display the connection between man and nature. This small shrine not only represented the spiritual centre of the village, it also connected with the root of the gigantic old tree, and through it was joined to the earth. By making their offering to the altar in the centre of the shrine, people found a connection with mother earth

1869

1 photograph : glass photonegative, wet collodion : stereograph ; glass approximately 10.5 x 21.5 cm (4 x 8 in.)

Chinese shrine Bears no Thomson number, now numbered [vii]

China through the lens of John Thomson, 1868-1872, Beijing: Beijing World Art Museum, 2009, p. 163 (reproduced)

This is one of a collection of original glass negatives made by John Thomson. The negatives, made between 1868 and 1872, were purchased from Thomson by Sir Henry Wellcome in 1921

Wellcome Collection 19976i