Capturing Japan in Nineteenth-century New England Photography Collections

The six influential New Englanders at the center of this fascinating study traveled to Japan soon after it opened to the world, coincidentally at the same time that photography came into wide use. The travels and careers of the six (among them are the collector Isabella Stewart Gardner and naturalist Edward Sylvester Morse, who was director of the Peabody Essex Museum), their promotion of Japan and its culture, and the world captured in the photographs are described, frequently supplemented with other historic images. Hight (art history, U. of New Hampshire) ascribes the photos of the collections to the shops that sold them in Japan and discusses the process of their production, including hand-coloring, with an extended discussion of the choice of subjects for the western viewer. Guided by the photographs, Hight illuminates elements of the society of 19th-century Japan, such as the lives of girls and women sold into prostitution, and develops an image of the early and important relationship between the two countries in terms of art and commerce. Heavily illustrated with b&w and a series of color plates. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Eleanor M. Hight is Professor of Art History at the University of New Hampshire. She was the co-editor with Gary D. Sampson of Colonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place (2004).