El. knyga: Journey of "e;A Good Type"e;: From Artistry to Ethnography in Early Japanese Photographs

Most natural history, science, history, and cultural museums have collections of photographs. Particularly in general museums, they are usually considered less important than the objects. This book looks at ways these museum collections of photographs can be useful and important. It is a well-balanced book of interest to scholars, artists and photographers, and general library readers. The book looks specifically at early photographs of Japan and Japanese people in the collection of Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography. They were taken in situations that vary from personal portraits to "French postcards," tourist postcards, scientific documentation of racial "types," costumes, places, or cultures. What they look like to us now may be quite different than how they were used when first taken, which may also be different from how they were used at another time. There is also no simple way to divide them into staged vs. authentic images. The author writes in non-judgmental language that reflects the complexities of real life; the book is clear about the racial and cultural prejudices in historical Euro-American photographs and attitudes but does not make assumptions about individual images, people photographed, or collectors. There is research on the history of particular images. The hand-colored and sepiatone photographs are often striking or beautiful, and well reproduced. The text reflects strong knowledge of both museum work and the history of the encounter between Japan and the West. The book will be useful to professional and general readers wanting to learn more about either that history or interpreting/authenticating historical photographs. It will be equally useful to academic, professional, and general readers thinking about how museum photographs--and people looking at museums or photographs--reflect their own culture and time as well as the one in the picture. The book is fully illustrated, and each photograph discussed is included. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)



When Japan opened its doors to the West in the 1860s, delicately hand-tinted photographic prints of Japanese people and landscapes were among its earliest and most popular exports. David Odo studies the collection of Japanese photographs at Harvard’s Peabody Museum and the ways they were produced, acquired, and circulated in the nineteenth century.