John Thomson, Example Of A Coiffure On A Tartar Or Manchu Female, Peking, Pechili Province, China, 1869. (restored)

who is wearing a long sleeved quilted garment. The hair is wrapped around a flat strip of wood. 

Here's another John Thomson classic (albeit with extensive restoration), found again within Wellcome's fantastic collection of his work. Thomson has continued to enthrall people after a century; his work has recently returned to China, where many Chinese for the first time are seeing the essence of their forebears through his eternal artistry. 

This girl actually appeared in several of Thomson's pictures. It was apparent that he spent some time in photographing a team of Manchu models both in their natural surrounds and in front of a portable backdrop. In essence my personal suspicion is that his process was remarkably similar to a modern day photo shoot. Of course, he didn't have electronic flashes or digital film, but instead had to look under a dark cloth at an upside down reversed image on a dim matte glass plate. Photography in those days was genuinely a monumental undertaking.

(Source: ralph repo)