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No title (Couple with a cabinet photograph and ghost in background)

Kusakabe Kimbei(1880s)

National Gallery of Victoria

National Gallery of Victoria
Melbourne, Australia

The global history of art photography is dominated by various aesthetic styles, but there are interesting regional variances in how the medium is practiced. In Japan, for instance, a form of hand-coloured studio photography gained prominence in the mid 1800s that drew inspiration from the aesthetic conventions and subject matter of the famed ukiyo-e prints, which focused on activities in the liberated pleasure districts outside major Japanese cities.

Widespread interest in photography came relatively late to Japan and coincided with the forcible opening up of the country by trade with the United States in 1854. With the easing of rules prohibiting foreigners from working in Japan, enterprising photographers began to set up businesses in the trading ports, producing images especially for the tourist trade. Interestingly, these European and, eventually, Japanese photographers continued to depict traditional customs with very few showing the widespread impact of modernisation that was transforming the society in the late Edo period.

Their so-called costumes and customs photographs generally fall into various categories such as portraits of geishas, samurai, sumo wrestlers and other notable local types. Photographers also often created distinctive studio sets in which to recreate typical scenes of Japanese life. This photograph is one such example, although what it shows is far from typical. It is a rare example of a shinrei shashin – a ghost photograph. The photograph was taken by the noted Japanese practitioner Kusakabe Kimbei who had worked both with Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried before opening his own studio in Yokohama in 1881. Kimbei learnt well from these two major European practitioners, but he also developed his own distinctive approach on studio conventions by taking his photography into even more theatrical territory.

Text © National Gallery of Victoria, Australia

Details

  • Title: No title (Couple with a cabinet photograph and ghost in background)
  • Creator: Kusakabe Kimbei
  • Creator Lifespan: 1841 - 1934
  • Creator Nationality: Japanese
  • Creator Death Place: Hyogo Prefecture, Japan
  • Creator Birth Place: Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan
  • Date Created: (1880s)
  • Location Created: Japan
  • Physical Dimensions: 26.5 x 20.4 cm (Image and sheet)
  • Type: Photographs
  • Rights: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 2004, © National Gallery of Victoria
  • External Link: National Gallery of Victoria
  • Medium: albumen silver photograph, colour dyes
  • Additional information: In this photograph we see what looks like two actors with the man holding up a commercially produced photographic portrait or cabinet card. On closer inspection it is apparent that, between the pair, is a faint ghostly figure of a woman, her presence suggesting that the cabinet photograph the man holds is a portrait taken while she was still alive. On the reverse of the image, paint has been applied to the outspread sleeves of the ghost-woman’s kimono which subtly embrace the man and woman. However, there is one more surprise with this photograph. A contemporary catalogue of Kimbei’s work describes the photograph as ‘figurines’, casting doubt on whether they are actually real-life actors or constructed models. To create the delicate hand-colouring that is such a notable part of this print, Kimbei hired local artists to hand-colour the albumen silver photograph with dyes using blocks of colour in a manner similar to that of woodblock prints. It was a labour-intensive process, with one photograph sometimes taking up to six hours of painstaking work, and fine details painted with a brush of only one hair. The result, as here, is a highly sophisticated photograph with colour used selectively to animate this complex hybrid of the real and the theatrical.

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