Unknown Japanese
[Three young men]

Public Domain

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Images(2)

Artist Unknown Japanese

CultureJapanese

Titles

[Three young men]

Datec. 1875

MediumAmbrotype in kiri wood case

DimensionsImage: 3 × 4 1/8 in. (7.6 × 10.5 cm)
Closed (Case): 4 1/8 × 5 3/8 × 11/16 in. (10.5 × 13.6 × 1.8 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the S. I. Morris Photography Endowment

Object number2007.721.A,.B

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionThis photograph of three young men comes from a moment when Japanese photographers captured the vibrancy and curiosity of the newly modern nation, soon after the Meiji Restoration. Unlike European photographers who had set up commercial studios in Japan in the 1860s and created staged photographs of Japanese “types” (the samurai, the geisha, the peasant laborer, the tattooed man, and so forth), this unknown studio photographer portrayed the young men in traditional Japanese clothing but with surprisingly modern hairstyles and appearance. This type of photograph was popular in 1870s Japan: an ambrotype (a collodion image on glass) presented in a kiri (paulownia) wood case.
Provenance[Charles Schwartz Ltd., New York]; purchased by MFAH, 2007.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Stamped in red, left edge of case: [circular, possibly artist’s stamp]

Inscribed in pencil on applied label, top right edge of case: J.94.160
Inscribed in pencil on applied label, top right edge of case: CS9107

Stamped in red, left edge of case: [circular, possibly artist’s stamp]

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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