The First Photo Ever Created by a Japanese Photographer (2016)

the dates are a mess and make no sense :

> After Shimazu’s death in 1958, the Terukuni Shrine (also referred to as Shōkoku Shrine) was built in Kagoshima as a memorial to the late daimyo. He was enshrined there in 1863, and the photograph was placed there as an object of worship. However, it later went missing in the 1800s.

One of my favorite books I read last year was "Photography for Everyone: The Cultural Lives of Cameras and Consumers in Early Twentieth-Century Japan," which traced the development of the Japanese middle class in relation to photography— how people learned to consume collectively, developed a distinct aesthetic from Western photographers, and the gender dynamics of adoption of a new technology.

> Having obtained the camera, the daimyo ordered his retainers to study it and produce working photographs. One of these retainers was Ichiki Shirō (市来 四郎). Ichiki had previously excelled in the study of gunpowder production, which involved an understanding of chemistry.

> To the daimyo’s delight, on September 17, 1857, Ichiki succeeded in creating a portrait of Shimazu dressed in formal attire. Ichiki recorded his struggles, and eventual triumph in mastering the camera, in his memoirs which he compiled in 1884.

Does anyone know if these are available in an English translation? Sounds like it'd be a fascinating read - I wonder how much of the memoirs are taken up by the nearly-decade-long process of mastering the use of that camera.

interesting read. makes me think of my great(x3)grandmother, and her father, who both were a photographers not too long after this occurred. I hadn't quite realized just how early days it was for photography when they ran their atelier in the late 1800's.

i find this stuff quite fascinating.

I visited Nagasaki a year ago. I was surprised how open the city was historically to outsiders. After some reading I understood why. Previously I only knew the city in reference to the atomic bomb. European and Chinese influences are noticeable all over the place.

It is only in Nagasaki where you could have bough an European machine.

This year I am planning to visit Kagoshima. I wonder if the photo is still there after it was found.

Love the big suit like David Byrne in Stop Making Sense.

Kinda hard to imagine such primitive, yet working technology. Reminds me of Fatal Frame though