An unusual rickshaw on 19th-century Pottinger Street

Submitted by David on Sun, 02/09/2025 - 04:00
El djinricsha y el palanquin

Something unusual about this rickshaw will help us work out When the photo was taken, and other clues will shed light on the photo’s Who, What, and Where.

For more on that, and several other stories about this scene, please see the video below. (Or you can click here to watch it on Youtube).

For more information about the topics in the video, please use these links:

Comments

Hi David,

The same photo in the two other links mentioned above did not have the cracks like feature on both sides of it.  It may have happened to that particular copy with the Spanish annotations.

Some chemical damage or bad handling?  I wonder......

T

Hi T,

I've had a message from Marc in Belgium which I'll post below. He says that the lines were probably caused by damage to the plate, so the likely explanation is that the French and German copies were made when the plate was still in good condition, but the Spanish copy shown above was made later when the plate had already started to deteriorate. Over to Marc:

You were wondering about the black cracks on the ricksaw albumen print... the cracks were indeed in the emulsion of the glass negative... due to heat, humidity ...that tropical Hong Kong weather ... as the emulsion sticks firmly to the glass... and as glass heats easily it also expands... of course the dry emulsion is not so flexible so it cracks... creating white lines... which show up as black lines on the albumen contact print. So the print was sold as it is.
Here is some more info:

https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/conservation/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-…