THOMSON, John, & Adolphe Smith.

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Street Life in London. First edition, perhaps bound from the serialized parts, with a preface that was omitted in the collected edition. In this landmark work of social documentary photography, Thomson and Smith used the "unquestionable accuracy" (p. v) of the camera lens to represent everyday life of the urban poor. It set a precedent for documentary practices that would flourish in the following century. Each image in Street Life in London is accompanied by an essay featuring extensive observation on its subject and interviews reported first-hand. The result is a fully realized record of the trades, hardships, and personalities of late Victorian London, from recruiting sergeants to fruit sellers and street sweepers. Perhaps the most affecting photograph is titled "The Crawler", which depicts a destitute woman holding a child. Her evident vulnerability "establishes an immediate psychological intimacy with the viewer. It is shocking, a portent of the much more involved and intimate social documentary mode of the twentieth century" (Parr & Badger).Thomson (1837-1921) began his career as a travel photographer, journeying extensively throughout East Asia, especially China. His images from his travels included a vast range of subjects, from kings and politicians to peasants and the homeless; this experience made him "uniquely suited to take on the poverty in his own back yard" upon his return to Britain (Hannavy, p. 1389). Smith (1846-1925) was a left-wing activist as well as a w

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