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Robert Amos: Japan photos document, romanticize culture’s past

During the last half of the 19th century, while the western world was besmirched by the industrial revolution, many looked to Japan for a glimpse of pre-lapsarian exoticism.
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Peddler with a cart, photograph by an unknown photographer from the exhibit Koshashin: The Hall Collection of 19th Century Photographs of Japan.

During the last half of the 19th century, while the western world was besmirched by the industrial revolution, many looked to Japan for a glimpse of pre-lapsarian exoticism. Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado represents the perfect dream of the West’s fantasy of Japan as it was before Admiral Perry’s gunboat diplomacy broke down the doors and changed Japan forever.

With steamboat, rail and rickshaw, the modernizers came and, even in those early days, brought the camera. While a few locals had themselves immortalized in the foreigners’ new photo studios, early photography in Japan was primarily used to create souvenir prints for tourists. Hand-tinted with watercolours, these prints were sold in albums and made their way back to Boston and Montreal and Manchester. Back in Japan, not many survived the subsequent earthquakes, fire and carpet bombing.

It comes as a surprise to find that one of the largest extant collections of old photos of Japan (ko-shashin: old photos) has been amassed in Edmonton. On her honeymoon, Arlene Hall’s husband gave her a small album of these old photos — she had spotted it in an antique shop in the Okanagan town of Oliver in 1967. As time went on, she added a few more from antique fairs. She slowly made contacts with other collectors. Then, with the advent of the Internet, the photos became suddenly available and research into the photographers and subjects advanced quickly. At this point, Hall has collected more than 1,000 images.

Hall was at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria for the opening of this exhibit of 300 examples from the Hall Collection, accompanied by curator Catherine Crowston of Edmonton’s Art Gallery of Alberta. As the imagery on show is typically small, pale and rather stagey, it was helpful to have these two at hand to share their passion and expertise.

The collector admitted that she had never been to Japan — the time and place she dreams of vanished 150 years ago. She is fascinated by a certain antiquated way of life. In fact, the photographers themselves were in some measure re-creating a way of life that had almost disappeared. While Tokyo was racing forward with brick buildings and colonial ambitions, these pictures record an agricultural past of rice paddies and thatched huts. The camera was turned toward the retro styles of the geisha, the samurai and the curious customs of the Land of the Rising Sun.

Photographers, both westerners and native Japanese, employed the western esthetic of camera work with its compositional values, simple perspective and techniques like vignetting. The traditionalist woodcut print artists of Japan’s Ukiyo-e style were at this time dying out in the face of photography, and it’s said that many were hired to hand-colour these photographs. (The photos in no way rival the beauties of the colour woodcuts showing in the Forty Seven Ronin exhibition in the next room.)

With our modern attitudes, we may question the authenticity of these images. We can assume that many of the models were costumed actors hired for their roles. The early photographic materials necessitated long exposures. Children, who aren’t likely to stay still for up to three minutes, are rarely seen. To achieve the strong lighting required, indoor scenes were often re-enacted outdoors against a backdrop. Such breaches of authenticity are well-known in the work of early photographers E. S. Curtis (and his Indians of North America) and Robert Flaherty (with his motion picture of Eskimo life Nanook of the North).

While the picturesque and exotic subject matter of Koshashin will attract most people, for the art connoisseur of today, it may be matters of presentation that make these images compelling. Here on Canada’s west coast, art’s bright shining star, Jeff Wall, has made his career with carefully staged photographs. As in these Japanese scenes, Wall often portrays the turning tide of cultures in transition — the wilderness of our forests being taken over by the suburbs of Vancouver. Now, as then, we can’t avoid wondering about the edge between documentary truth and romanticized fiction.

You can catch an informative tour of the exhibition on Thursday at 7 p.m. Or, on March 6 at 2 p.m., show up for the lecture by Barry Till. Till is a terrific speaker and will address the broader subject of 19th-century Japan.

And while you’re at the gallery, take in Virtuous Vendetta: The Loyal 47, an exhibition of Japanese woodcut prints and regular film showings looking into the saga of the Forty Seven Ronin.

For more details, call the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (1040 Moss St., 250-384-4171, aggv.bc.ca). Koshashin continues until March 31.