浮世の花 - Sanders of Oxford

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A figure of import in the development of Japanese photography, Stillfried widened the arena of imagery considered suitable for photographic treatment; his subjects ranging from marketable portraits of geisha and courtesans to the sensitive documentation of unusual medical ailments [such as, for example, his study of Elephantiasis, ca. 1870s]. He also provided training for many Japanese artists, most notably Kusakabe Kimbei, to whom he sold the majority of his stock upon his departure from Japan in 1886. In the Japanese imagination, the three-stringed shamisen was one of the iconic accoutrements of the Flower and Willow trade. Introduced from China via Korea in the 1560s, within a century it had become the principal instrument of the newly emerged figure of the geisha. As Dalby [1983; 2000: p. 259] points out, ‘Whenever one heard a shamisen, one heard the music of the city-dwelling merchant class…the upper classes did not play (and were not supposed to listen to) the plaintive and sentimental lyrics that went with shamisen tunes.’ As the quintessential sound of the Floating World, the instrument was frequently subject to governmental bans, but nevertheless was played and enjoyed everywhere, as such becoming the most necessitous attribute of a working geisha. As an old geisha saying had it: Sanbon ga areba, taberareru [‘If you’ve got three strings, you can eat’]. 55. Adolfo Farsari (1841-1898) Three Maiko posing on an Engawa [veranda]. Date [Western]: ca. 1885 Date [Japanese]: ca. Meiji 18 Method: Hand-tinted albumen print Dimensions: 10 x 8 inches [Image] References: Tony Bennett, Early Japanese Images, (Tôkyô: Charles E.Tuttle, 1995) Code: JO/AD24 Price [Mounted]: £225 Adolfo Farsari was born in the town of Vicenza, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A fervent abolitionist, he travelled to America in 1863, enlisting in the Union army as a cavalry soldier during the Civil War. He moved to Yokohama in 1877 to set up trading as a tobacco merchant, but soon became fascinated by the aesthetic and financial possibilities of photography. In 1885, he bought the Japan Photographic Association studio from Baron von Stillfried, a transaction that included not only valuable negatives by the Baron and Beato, but also fifteen skilled colourists. However, this initial good fortune was marred by a devastating fire which destroyed his entire stock. Nevertheless, it was quickly reproduced by the stoic Farsari in a matter of months and, bolstered by the popularity of the ‘Yokohama Shashin’ culture, his business continued to flourish. He subsequently moved his studio to the original location of the Yokohama Photographic Company. The resultant A. Farsari & Company would eventually become one of Japan’s largest photography studios, with, at one point, over forty Japanese artists associated with the business. When Fasari eventually returned to Italy in 1890, his studios continued to trade until 1917, becoming the last Western-owned photographic house in Japan. To his contemporaries, Fasari was known principally for his extraordinary use of naturalistic colour, Rudyard Kipling noting this aspect of Farsari's work in 1889 when he advised his readers: ‘Though expensive and perhaps you end up penniless, unless you are already penniless, in Japan you have to buy photographs and the best are from the Farsari & Co. studio, known from Saigon to America. Farsari is a nice and eccentric chap; he has the soul of an artist and these are qualities to pay for but his stuff is worth the price. A coloured photo makes you think of a horror and it normally is so, however Farsari knows how to colour well and can reproduce the light tones of that beautiful country. From over the bridge on the ship I was laughing at his red and blue hills but once I reached there I realized that what he had painted was real.’ [Quoted in Hugh Cortezzi, Kipling’s Japan, p.102]
56. Kusakabe Kimbei (1841-1934) A Rainy Night [I] Date [Western]: ca. 1880s [Image produced ca. 1870s] Date [Japanese]: Meiji period Method: Hand tinted albumen photograph Dimensions: 9 1/4 x 7 inches Code: SOX Price [Framed]: £200 Born to a family of textile merchants in Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture in 1841, Kusakabe Kimbei (professionally known by his given name, Kimbei, considered easier for his foreign clients to pronounce than Kusakabe) became one of the most accomplished and commercially successful Japanese photographers of his time. At the age of 17 or 18, he moved to Yokohama, where, in 1863, he became an assistant, possibly a colourist, in the Beato’s studio. The Venetian’s influence upon the young Kimbei seems to have been extremely beneficial and within a relatively short period of time, the latter became skilled enough to begin an apprenticeship in the 1870s with the equally admired von Stillfried. After a number of years, Kimbei established his own studio on Benten-dori in Yokohama, which operated until 1881. He later moved to Honchô, also in Yokohama, where he opened ‘Kimbei Photo Studio.’ His increased commercial success also enabled him to open branch studios in both Yokohama and Tôkyô and a retail shop in Ginza. After von Stillfried left Japan in 1883, Kimbei acquired his collection of glass plate negatives, which also comprised a number of plates by Beato, purchased with his studio in 1877. Kimbei subsequently reprinted the work of his mentors along with his own photographs; often including them in mixed albums destined for the tourist and export trade, disseminating his constructed vision of Japan to a fascinated West, eager for images of the newly-accessible country. The import of Kusakabe Kimbei lies in his conflation of elements of both the Western psychological or anthropological approach, and the highly codified Japanese aesthetic. In this way, despite the wistful nostalgia and tourist-trade pandering that colours a great deal of his oeuvre, particularly within his choice of studio subjects, he nevertheless managed to develop a vibrant, symbiotic genre, which set the focus of Japanese photography for many decades to come. Aside from photograph albums, he also produced collotype prints and lantern slides, primarily for the export market and his became one of the first Japanese-owned studios to import and sell photography equipment and supplies. Kimbei retired from photography in 1914 and took up Japanese painting in his later years. He died in Hyôgo Prefecture in 1934. This studio photograph represents one of two included in the exhibition [Cat. No: 57] from a series of women and children posing with amagusa [umbrellas] in various studio sets. Here, a bijin wearing an okoso-zukin [hood] and holding a paper hand lantern poses against an elaborate Fuji-dominated backdrop, possibly designed by Farsari. 57. Kusakabe Kimbei (1841-1934) A Rainy Night [II] Date [Western]: ca. 1880s [Image produced ca. 1870s] Date [Japanese]: Meiji period Method: Hand tinted albumen photograph Negative Number: 1057 Dimensions: 9 1/4 x 7 inches Code: SOX Price [Framed]: £200 A woman struggles with an amagusa against an imaginary rainstorm. The similarity of this pose to those of figures in haku'u [‘sudden shower’] woodblock prints such as Hiroshige’s A
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浮世の花 - Sanders of Oxford

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