Synopses & Reviews
Review
This important study of the nineteenth-century photographs in the Peabody Museum is written with verve and clarity of thought and will be welcomed by specialists and general readers alike. Luke Gartlan, University of St Andrews
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
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. Renowned European photographers Raimund von Stillfried and Felice Beato established studios in Japan in the 1860s; the work was soon taken up by their Japanese proteges and successors Uchida Kuichi, Kusakabe Kimbei, and others. Hundreds of these photographs, collected by travelers from the Boston area, were eventually donated to Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, where they were archived for their ethnographic content and as scientific evidence of an "exotic" culture.
In this elegant volume, visual anthropologist David Odo examines the Peabody's collection of Japanese photographs and the ways in which such objects were produced, acquired, and circulated in the nineteenth century. His innovative study reveals the images' shifting and contingent uses--from tourist souvenir to fine art print to anthropological "type" record--were framed by the desires and cultural preconceptions of makers and consumers alike. Understood as both images and objects, the prints embody complex issues of history, culture, representation, and exchange.
About the Author
David Odo is Director of Student Programs and Research Curator of University Collections Initiatives at the Harvard Art Museums and a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University.Elizabeth Edwards is Research Professor in Photographic History and Director of the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University in Leicester, England.