Today, we do not know when
photography was introduced to Japan. It is quite possible, that the first photographer
was Eliphalet Brown who arrived with Commodore Perry's 'Black Ship' in 1853.
Soon after, several western photographers like Felice Beato, Baron von Stillfried-Ratenicz
and Adolfo Farsari settled in Japan and operated studios in Yokohama. They made
impact on japanese photographers like the famous Kusakabe Kimbei (1841-1934),
Shimooka Renjo, Uchida Kuichi, Ueno Hikoma, Tamamura Kozaburo and Ogawa Kazumasa.
The japanese artists combined the aesthetics of the traditional woodblock prints
(Ukiyo-e) to create a very unique style of art; severely composed pictures,
delicately handcoloured. A typical souvenir of a western
traveler in the Japan of the late 19th century was a souvenir album, bound
in ornate laquer covers, containing fourty or fifty original albumen photographs.
The pictures on this page (click to the small images to see larger ones) show
some examples of early japanese photography from albums of my collection. --- click to the thumbnails to see larger pictures and descriptions ---
