Water · Colour · Light The Japanese Influence

Photography was still a relatively new invention by the time it arrived in Japan in the 1850s Japanese and foreign artists were fascinated by photography’s ability to seemingly capture reality, and it became increasingly prevalent. David Odo, an anthropologist and curator at Harvard Art Museums, notes that “photography played very well into this kind of desire to learn more about Japan”. Once forbidden and beyond reach, Japan was somehow knowable all of a sudden.

The Japanese were keen to blend the style of their traditional woodblock prints— Ukiyo-e, developed in 1765, depicted scenes from everyday Japan and remained popular through the Meiji period until its end in 1912 - with this modern invention.

What makes Japanese photography so uniquely beautiful is its use of watercolour paints. The lack of colour in photographs left people feeling as if the image was incomplete, so tinted dyes and colouring soon became part of the photography process. Unlike the coloured photos produced in Europe and the US, which looked more like paintings, Japanese artists delicately painted their prints with watercolours, creating a hyper-realistic aesthetic.

Western tourists adored these photographs, and the money brought in by their purchases enabled Japan to mass-produce photographic print on paper from a negative. This process was called the albumen print, also known as the albumen silver print, and it involved creating prints from the albumen found in egg whites which bound the photographic chemicals to paper.

Defined by it’s emphasis on a return to skilled craftsmanship, & attention to design in the decorative arts, from the mechanization and mass production of the Industrial Revolution.