Album of albumens

Manufacturer	Adolfo Farsari & Company
Title	[Album of photografies of Japan]
Place	Yokohama (Japan)
Date	circa 1887-1890
Register	03272

Photo album of Japanese origin containing one hundred photographs taken with the albumen procedure. Each photograph is delicately coloured by hand and the album covers are lacquered wood in red, black and old gold. These albums were luxury items intended especially for foreign travellers, tourists, or residents of Japan. They were a souvenir of Japanese customs, people, cities, landscapes and heritage at a time, in the late 19th century, when everything from the East, and especially Japan, was fashionable in the West and had a notable influence on the arts. This album was made by the photographic studio Adolfo Farsari & Co., an Italian photographer established in the Japanese city of Yokohama since 1873. This studio, one of the most important in its time, perfected the practice of presenting photographs in albums, and turned them into luxury objects. His photographs were distinctive for their formal excellence, although in his catalogue there were works by several photographers, apart from those of Farsari himself. The album preserved by the Museum of Cinema is a classic example of the photography made by Japanese studios at the end of the 19th century, in which the main subject, composition and colouring were a combination of Western photographic technique with the Japanese artistic tradition. These photographers created the images and iconography, and Meiji-era Japan was introduced to the world.

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