Yokohama shashin

Collection composed of 24 wet-plate collodion photographs printed on albumen paper and hand-colored. The coloring of the photographs uses the traditional technique of distemper painting (natural pigments mixed with glue) applied with a brush. Photographers thus called upon painters rather than the watercolorists used for prints.
Album formed of two wooden boards lacquered in red and bound Japanese-style in accordion format. Front cover lacquered with a scene depicting a man pulling a jinrikisha with a woman carrying a parasol. In the background, Mount Fuji in silver color. Back cover with flowers. Edges gilt. Each fold-out (recto and verso) presents 12 photographs, on the recto (animated scenes) views of landscapes and cities, on the verso, figures. This presentation is traditional for travel albums "views and costume," which the Japanese would later adopt. Each photograph: 9.5x13.7cm. The photographs are in very fine condition, well preserved. Some pale spotting in the margins. The first board is slightly detached from the front lacquered cover. The ivory faces have attracted covetousness and have been removed, leaving only bare wood where the faces once were. A small lack on the back cover.
The views represent Yokohama and Nagasaki, some are animated with figures, others not, showing temples (the gate of the Shinto temple in Nagasaki), streets, a Japanese boat, Mount Fuji, a view of Lake Hakone, and some contemporary views with modern buildings (a street in Nagasaki, the customs house in Yokohama), which is a novelty in the Yokohama shashin of this late 19th century. The first collections showed with Beato only views of ancient Japan in black and white, and both representation and demand evolved. These Japanese views are very close in their staging and framing to the art of printmaking. One finds there the Japanese taste, already illustrated by prints, for famous sites.
Furthermore, one sees practically no more men in photographs of this period because the photographs are meant to represent contemporary Japan and men are now dressed in Western style, there are no more samurai. This is why women are represented in more than 70 percent of photographs from this period. In this regard, it is always Geisha who are used for photos. All studios thus had contracts with Geisha houses whom they had pose for all scenes: musicians, etc. One thus sees a blind woman playing the Shiansen, as was practiced in Japan, and the blind woman is here played by a Geisha.
Other photographs show women practicing Ikebana (Japanese floral art), the tea ceremony, painting on silk, the game of Onigokko (blind man's bluff).
Kusakabe Kimbei, one of the most important photographers of this period, more commonly called by his first name Kimbei due to the difficulty experienced by foreigners in pronouncing his name, was first known as Beato's colorist before opening his own studio in Yokohama in 1881. When opening his studio he bought Beato's and Stillfried's plates, the first European photographers to establish themselves in Japan.
Tamamura Kasaburo first established himself in Tokyo, then in 1883 in Yokohama. It is not known how the two artists came to collaborate or how their photographs came to be mixed in several collections.
It should be noted however that any attribution to a photographer is difficult due to the very history of photography in Japan, because all the European studios and the first Japanese studios were bought by Japanese and the plates continued to be exploited under the name of the new photographer. However, this album is comparable (by its subjects and its binding) to already known examples by the same photographers; see at C. Baxley album 111111. Few albums and photographs bear a signature or studio mark. For example, we know that Beato left professional photography in 1872, Baron von Stillfried definitively left Japan in 1881. The same year, Kimbei Kusakabe (1841-1934), student of Beato and Stillfried, opened his own studio in Yokohama. He would buy back four years later part of his two masters' negatives and would reprint them regularly.