JOHNSON (WILLIAM J.) AND WILLIAM HENDERSON]

Indian Amateur's Photographic Album, nos. 1-31 (no. 5 being an 'Appendix', see below) bound in 3 vol., FIRST EDITION, [Bombay, William Henderson, November 1856-May 1859]

Footnotes

William Johnson, a civil servant by training, established a studio in Grant's Road, Bombay, and began taking daguerreotypes as early as 1852, graduating quickly to wet collodion negatives by the middle of that decade. At around the same time he and Henderson founded the Bombay Photographic Society, under whose patronage the Indian Amateur's Photographic Album was published.

Subscribers received three albumen prints and a leaf of description each month, although the publication seems to have been slightly erratic. It appears that Number 5 (March 1857) was never issued, an 'Appendix to No. 5', with one print rather than three, taking its place. In addition, certain contributors were better than others at supplying copy: 'A.N.S.' (Alan Newton Scott?) seems to have been particularly unreliable, and the editors eventually gave up trying to supply descriptions for his images. The majority of the photographs are attributed to Johnson and Henderson, while others are merely by "An Amateur". Other photogrpahers include H.H. Hinton Esq. of Hornby Row Academy, A.A. Jacob, Archibald Robertson, A.N.S. and H.D. Rae.

The subject matter ranges from 'Costumes and Characters of Western India', an ethnographical series by Johnson and Henderson later reprinted in Johnson's The Oriental Races and Tribes, Residents and Visitors of Bombay in 1863, to architectural studies in Bombay, Surat, Elephanta, and the surrounding areas.