During the second half of the 1800s, an extraordinary artistic phenomenon took place in Japan. The mastery of traditional Japanese painting embraced the opportunities inherent in emerging Western photographic technique. And the outcome was astonishing and poetically beautiful. Delicate color applied to even the tiniest areas of the photographed surface resulted in works of art so sublime and subtle that it is difficult to distinguish today between the painting and the photography.
This artistic movement is known as the School of Yokohama, and it represents one of the peaks, if not the climax of 19th-century photography.
During this time period, Japan was a society very much in transformation, both culturally and visibly. Thousands of artists, both foreigners and Japanese, experimented with this delicate technique recording this profound transformation through a unified and recognizable language, suffused with originality and aesthetic and stylistic principles.
This exhibition of +70 exquisite hand-painted photographs and albums draws on an extensive and superb collection, and is organized by Contemporanea Progetti.
