# Yokohama photography

> Albumen prints of Japan made for foreign residents and tourists: views of temples, avenues, gardens and Mount Fuji, and studio scenes of 'manners and customs' (a rickshaw ride, a sedan chair, women with parasols or instruments) acted out by hired models before painted backdrops. Japanese colourists washed each print with thin watercolour, so pale pinks, blues and greens lie over a sepia image. Numbers and captions are written into the negative, and the prints were bound in albums with lacquered or inlaid covers.

- Period: 1863–1910
- Where it began: Yokohama, the treaty port where foreigners lived and landed
- Kind: Early processes
- Also called: Yokohama shashin, Meiji souvenir photography, Hand-coloured photographs of Japan
- Page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/yokohama-photography/

## How the look is made

- Stage scenes in the studio as the Yokohama studios did: one action (carrying, pulling, playing, serving) against a painted backdrop, with a few real props such as bamboo fencing, stones or tufts of grass.
- Hold the models still at middle distance and eye level, the whole tableau sharp and centred.
- Print on warm albumen, then colour by hand with thin, transparent washes so the photograph shows through: pale skin, soft blues and pinks in the clothing, green in foliage.
- Number and caption each negative in small capitals in a lower corner, as items in a catalogue of views and scenes.
- Sequence views and studio scenes together in a bound album, so landscape and genre alternate.

## How it is lit

- Even daylight from a studio skylight on models before a painted backdrop.
- Flat or gentle outdoor daylight for views of temples, avenues and gardens, the scene sharp from front to back.

### A light plan from its choices (schematic)

- Key: the open sky, all around and above, soft.

## Camera settings

35–55 mm · f/8–f/32 · 0.5–15 s · ISO 1–20 (on 8x10), inferred. Inferred: album prints of about 20 × 27 cm contact-printed from roughly 8 × 10 in glass negatives with 10–15 in lenses; wet collodion (about ISO 1) needed seconds, stopped down for views sharp front to back; later gelatin dry plates allowed fractions of a second.

## Directing people

Hold one custom still as a tableau: bearers shoulder a sedan chair or a puller grips a rickshaw's shafts, side-on and mid-step; women sit or kneel with a parasol, fan or instrument, or turn their backs to show the obi. Faces stay composed; seated women often look calmly at the lens, while workers look ahead into the action.

## Styling

Models in kimono, or in the work clothes of bearers, pullers and craftsmen, often studio costume worn to play a part. A painted backdrop with bamboo fencing, stones, grass tufts and a real sedan chair or rickshaw, every prop placed by the studio; outdoor views are left as found.

## Before you shoot it

These photographs were made for a foreign gaze: studios chose subjects 'to appeal to foreign taste', staged and contrived 'manners and customs' scenes with hired models, and captioned people as types, shaping an exotic, timeless picture of Japan that later critics have seen as pandering to Western exoticism. Show the originals with that context and with the studios' names (and the colourists', where known). Do not use the style to cast Japanese people, or anyone, as costumed types or curiosities, and never generate a fake Meiji photograph or present a generated image as a historical one. For new work keep the craft (hand-colouring, painted backdrops, the album) and let sitters decide how they are shown; commission and credit Japanese photographers and colourists who work this way.

## Photographs

- Attributed to Raimund von Stillfried, Sedan Chair, c. 1870–80. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Shown on the page: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-F-F01174-U
- Attributed to Kusakabe Kimbei, Jinrikishia, c. 1870–91. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Shown on the page: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-F-F01161-AG
- Kusakabe Kimbei, Stone lanterns in Ueno park, Tokyo, c. 1890–1903. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Shown on the page: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-F-2003-147-1

## Sources

- Adolfo Farsari, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Farsari (hand-coloured albumen prints on album leaves; 19 of 32 employees were colourists in 1891; albums in brocade or lacquer boards inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl and gold; customers foreign residents and tourists; subjects 'chosen to appeal to foreign taste'; scenes 'often staged and contrived'; seen as 'pandering to nineteenth-century Western notions of exoticism'; Farsari and Tamamura acquire Stillfried & Andersen in 1885)
- Felice Beato, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felice_Beato (in Yokohama by 1863; Beato & Wirgman 1864–1867; hand-colouring by Japanese watercolourists and woodblock printmakers; views paired with costumes and manners; Native Types and Views of Japan by 1868; stock sold to Stillfried & Andersen, 1877)
- Raimund von Stillfried, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raimund_von_Stillfried (Stillfried & Co. 1871–1875; Stillfried & Andersen or Japan Photographic Association 1875–1885; 'carefully staged genre scenes'; hand-coloured albumen souvenirs for foreign residents and visitors)
- Kusakabe Kimbei, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusakabe_Kimbei (colourist and assistant to Beato and Stillfried; own Yokohama studio from 1881; negatives of Beato, Stillfried and Uchida acquired; hired geisha to pose; women popular with tourists; accordion albums; retired 1914)
- Tamamura Kozaburo, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamamura_Kozaburo (moved to Yokohama in 1883; a founder of Yokohama shashin; studio still operating in 1909)
- Hand-colouring of photographs, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand-colouring_of_photographs (Japanese hand-colouring from the 1860s; Beato and Wirgman first; Stillfried, Kimbei, Tamamura, Farsari; watercolour and transparent pigments; continued into the 20th century)
- Langmann Family Photograph collection, Museum of Anthropology at UBC: https://atom.moa.ubc.ca/index.php/langmann-family-photograph-collection (hand-coloured albumen prints of the Meiji period; albums with lacquer covers decorated in makie; subjects echoing ukiyo-e; 'souvenir photography or Yokohama photography')
- Japanse vrouw in een draagstoel met twee dragers ('Sedan Chair'), attributed to Raimund von Stillfried, Rijksmuseum: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-F-F01174-U (studio scene with painted backdrop, hand-coloured albumen print in an album)
- Sedan Chair, attributed to Raimund von Stillfried, Rijksmuseum: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-F-F01174-U (hand-coloured albumen print, 198 × 267 mm)
- Hommoku, Yokohama, Syracuse University Art Museum: https://onlinecollections.syr.edu/objects/33755/hommoku-yokohama (albumen print, c. 1880, sheet 20.5 × 25.6 cm)
- Wet Collodion and Ambrotype Process (Scully & Osterman), EdinPhoto: https://edinphoto.org.uk/1_early/1_early_photography_-_processes_-_wet_collodion_-_osterman.htm (collodion plates have a rating of about ASA 1, so long exposures are required)
- Collodion process, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collodion_process (wet collodion needed only a few seconds to expose an image in daylight; sensitive only to blue and ultraviolet; gelatin dry plates could be made much more sensitive)

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From Lumogeny (https://lumogeny.com/), a service of Van Riel Online Services. The shoot sheet for your own camera, lenses and lights is on the page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/yokohama-photography/#sheet