Photograph album

日下部 金兵衛編集 銀塩写真アルバム

Western tourists in the late nineteenth century often returned home from Japan with photograph albums of places they admired. This album was compiled by Kusakabe Kimbei, one of the most accomplished Japanese photographers of his time. He first worked as an assistant photo-colorist and learned photography as an apprentice to Baron von Stillfried, an Austrian who worked in Japan from 1872 to 1883. From 1880 until 1914 Kimbei operated his own studio in Yokohama and a branch in Tokyo. After von Stillfried left Japan, Kimbei acquired many of his glass-plate negatives as well as plates of the well-known photographer Felice Beato (approx. 1833–1907) and of a few important Japanese photographers. Kimbei reprinted the work of these photographers along with his own and included them in his albums.