TRAVELER’S DIARY: Le Japon En Couleurs-Photographies du XIXe siècle
In an exhibition that a specialist visits, beyond the artworks and the documents that may accompany them, the space plays a pivotal role, at least in my case, as well as the way that art interacts with architecture. Living in Paris for the past few years, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs has become familiar to me, and I closely follow its exhibitions.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Dimitris Lempesis
However, the exhibition “Le Japon en couleurs. Photographies du XIXe siècle” was a surprise, not in terms of the works and their arrangement, but mainly because of the space it was set in, specifically the exhibition is on show in the library on the ground floor, which was functioning normally without disrupting its regular daily routines (!).Nagasaki and Yokohama were the cradles of early Japanese photography as both port cities were major tourist gateways to Japan. The tourist market gave rise to “Yokohama Shashin” or Yokohama-style photography. This genre refers to photographs produced by Yokohama’s foreign and Japanese photographers from the 1860s to the 1880s before its spread to other parts of Japan. The practice of coloring black-and-white photographs and glass slides by hand became widespread in Yokohama as color photography was not yet invented. Hand-colored images became the hallmark of Yokohama Shashin. Japanese pigments were especially well suited for hand coloring photographs and it became a fine art and large photo studios in Yokohama employed many Japanese “photo painters”. Yokohama’s hand-colored photographs soon became a major tourist export item on par with pottery and lacquerware. The exhibition “Le Japon en couleurs. Photographies du XIXe siècle” presents a part of its collection of 700 hand-colored photographs of the Yokohama Shashin style that depict landscapes, monuments, every day and theatrical scenes, and portraits, conveying a stereotypical vision of the Land of the Rising Sun. Each photograph is individually hand-colored, allowing for a subtle and strategically diverse range of color palettes and motifs.
Photo: Installation view: Le Japon en couleurs. Photographies du XIXe siècle, Musée des Arts Décoratifs-Paris, 2023, Photo: © & Courtesy Dimitris Lempesis
Info: Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 107 Rue de Rivoli, Paris, France, Duration: 8/11/2023-28/1/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00, https://madparis.fr/Musee-des-Arts-Decoratifs
