Video: 25 colored photographs of the 19th century from the Land of the Rising Sun: geisha, samurai and the most ordinary Japanese
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
British artist Felix Beato arrived in Japan in 1863 and spent over 20 years in that country. He became a pioneer in coloring photographs, and his work is valuable and unique due to the rarity of photographs of Japan during the Edo period - the time of the establishment of the Tokugawa dictatorship and, at the same time, the "golden age" of Japanese literature. The result of his work was 2 volumes of photographs "National Types", which included 100 genre and portrait works, 98 city panoramas and landscapes. In our review there are 25 photos from this unique collection.
Felice Beato is a British Italian. He was born in Venice in 1832 and grew up in the British protectorate of Corfu. Beato became interested in photography in his youth and studied this difficult business, working with James Robertson, one of the first British war photographers. Together with the master, he visited China, India and the Crimea.
In 1862, Beato sells most of his work, invests in the London Stock Exchange and quickly remains in nothing. A year later, he decides to leave the UK and go on a new adventure. This time he goes to Japan.
The year 1863 in Japan was the height of the civil war and the time when the country, which had spent several centuries in seclusion, was forced to expand trade relations with the West under American pressure.
Japan was torn apart by internal strife - the camp was divided by the Imperial Palace in Kyoto and the Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo. This period, which went down in history as Bakumatsu, became one of the darkest in the history of the country. As a result, the last Tokugawa shogun Yoshinobu renounced the throne, giving it up to the young emperor Mutsuhito. It was during this difficult period that Felice Beato came to Japan.
Beato arrived in Yokohama, where he subsequently lived for over 20 years. There he met another Briton, the artist Charles Virgman, and they opened a joint venture. Beato took photographs, and Virgman made sketches and prints based on them.
At that time, traveling in Japan was very dangerous, since the Shogunate's samurai killed all foreigners. Somehow Beato himself faced two "ronin" (as the free samurai were called). It was only thanks to his military connections that Beato was able to travel to the Japanese hinterland, where he was able to document the passing feudal age of Japan. Many of Beato's photographs were hand-colored using Japanese watercolor techniques.
Among his first Japanese photographs are portraits of the Satsuma samurai. They posed for him with pleasure. In one of these photographs, there are 4 samurai in the frame, which symbolically demonstrate the superiority of Japanese traditions over Western knowledge. One of them sits with a bare knife, and the other casually holds a book of English literature in his hands.
The Japanese samurai is a warrior who has taken an oath of allegiance and serves his master. He had to follow all the orders of his master - even kill a person or commit suicide. If the master turned out to be unworthy by the standards of Japanese society, then the shame fell on the samurai, who could commit hara-kiri. If the master was killed, for the samurai it was no less a shame - after all, he failed to protect him.
Complete self-control, tough discipline, stoicism and restraint of emotions - all these traits are reflected in the samurai culture. The death of the samurai was treated with contempt. Their life path, according to bushido, is the path of a warrior.
In the photo you can see in detail the clothes and ammunition of the samurai. By far the most impressive weapon of a samurai was the katana sword. For the Japanese, this is not just a weapon - it is the soul of a warrior. Exquisite shape, sharp blade make the katana a real work of art.
Japanese geisha are a special caste. They adorn tea houses with their beauty, and conversations with their wit. Get to know these amazing women with 20 retro photographs of Japanese geishas.
Recommended:
Historical photographs that vividly tell about the life and life of ordinary Russian people in the 19th century
Old photographs are a real time machine that can take you 100 years or even more back. It is thanks to old photographs that you understand what life was like for people in the distant past. And if you carefully consider the details, then such photographs can tell no less than history textbooks
Old colored photographs about the life of the Japanese in the second half of the 19th century (30 photos)
This collection of photographs from Japan was seen in Europe in 1839 with the light hand of Liu Dareg, a French artist, inventor and one of the creators of photography. These pictures aroused great interest among the public, but there was one "but" - the photographs were black and white, and the Europeans wanted to immerse themselves in a "highly realistic environment." By 1840, coloring photographs had already become common practice and contributed a lot to the development of tourism in the Land of the Rising Sun. In this review, there are old photographs that
Little Quirks of the Japanese: True Photos from Everyday Life in the Land of the Rising Sun
Fluffy flakes of snow, restless kids, surprised giraffes, people sleeping in the subway, women's legs, a head in a washing machine - all this and much more was captured by street photographer Shin Noguchi, who for many years snatches the most unusual, but such truthful moments from the everyday life of the Japanese
Hereditary Japanese samurai in photographs of the 19th century (15 photos)
Samurai were originally called aristocratic warriors (bushi), and from the 12th century this term began to be used as a name for all representatives of the military-feudal class of small nobles. The ideal samurai was supposed to be a stoic warrior who followed an unwritten code of conduct, be brave, and, if necessary, commit ritual suicide. Samurai lived in Japan in the 19th century and their photographs are admirable
The very first photographs in the world: 15 unique photographs of the 19th century from the British gallery Tate
An exhibition dedicated to the origins of photography has opened at the Tate Britain in London. In this exhibition, you can see the earliest photographs taken between 1840 and 1860. This review contains the very first photographs that capture the amazing atmosphere of that time and the people who lived at that time