Japan – Shiraito Waterfall Fujiyama
Yokohama, Japan: c 1870. Hand-tinted albumen print, 8 x 10 1/4 inches (201x 260 mm). Captioned and numbered 903 at lower right. Mounted on light board (8 1/4 x 10 1/2 inches – 210 x 265 mm), housed in an archival mat with clear mounting corners.
[Syracuse Univ. 1996.0303].
This photo of Shiraito Falls in Kamiide, Fujinomiya City, was taken from a distance so that the entire waterfall could be seen. Melting snow from Mt. Fuji is cut off by a cliff, and springs out from between the old and new lava layers, forming hundreds of thin waterfalls that fall 20 meters into the pool. The water from the falls becomes the Shiba River and flows into the Fuji River. It was designated a national place of scenic beauty and natural monument in 1936.
KUSAKABE Kimbei (1841-1932) is one of the most famous 19th and early 20th century Japanese photographers. Although little is know of his early life in a family of textile merchants, we know that he moved to Yokohama at the age of 18 to further his ambition of becoming an artist. At some time in the early 1860s he joined Felice Beato as a photo-colourist in his photography studio in Yokohama. Soon he was a fully fledged assistant and accompanied Beato on a trip to Shanghai in 1867. In the 1870s he joined Baron Raimund von Stillfried, who had acquired Beato’s photography business and studio in Yokohama. He also seems at this time to be in business selling his own silk paintings. In 1880 he opened his own Yokohama studio and, like his great rival Tamamura, targeted the foreign community selling souvenir albums. When Stillfried left Japan in 1885 Kusakabe Kimbei acquired his plates and some of those of Beato and continued to print and hand color them. His subjects appear more relaxed with him than they did for Stillfried and Beato and this is probably because he was Japanese. By 1892 he was advertising a portfolio of some 2000 images and by 1901 his studio was the largest in Japan. Kusakabe retired in 1914 and spent his later years painting. [sources; Bennett, Terry. Old Japanese Photographs: Collectors' Data Guide. London: Quaritch, 2006 & luminous-lint.com].
Condition: Near fine.
Item number: 2115
Price: $275.00
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