Collection 151 - Langmann Family Photograph collection

Title and statement of responsibility area

Title proper

Langmann Family Photograph collection

General material designation

  • Graphic material

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  • Source of title proper: Title based on name of collector.

Level of description

Collection

Reference code

151

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Dates of creation area

Date(s)

  • [186-?]-[191-?] (Creation)

Physical description area

Physical description

6 albums
2 photographs (framed)

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Archival description area

Custodial history

Scope and content

Collection consists of five albums of photos from Meiji period Japan including a few photos from Scotland, one album of photos from China, and two lacquer-framed photographs. It consists mostly of albumen hand-coloured Japanese photographs. These Japanese photographs belong to the genre known as souvenir photography or Yokohama photography. The subject of these photographs in this collection echoed those found in the Japanese ukiyo-e prints of the so-called “floating-world” of the late Edo Period, from around 1780 until the 1860s. The delicate hand colouring of the albumen silver prints is one of the characteristics of photographs of Japan from this period.

There were mainly two media to disseminate souvenir photos from Yokohama during Meiji period (1868 –1912): photo prints and lantern slides (see the James Davidson collection), but other materials were also used. These hand tinted photo prints were usually bound in albums with lacquer covers lavishly decorated in makie (蒔絵), a technique of applying adhesive metal such as gold and silver or colour powder in soft lacquer to create designs.

Notes area

Physical condition

Immediate source of acquisition

Donated by Uno Langmann in November 2018. Collection was donated alongside a copy of The Great Earthquake in Japan... 1891 (Kobe, 1892) (MOA Reading Room Call No. 11.6 MIL 1892 rare). This book contains images of the aftermath of the 1891 Mino–Owari earthquake in Japan. The book is by John Milne and W.K. Burton, and most of these photographs were taken by William Kinnimond Burton, a Scottish engineer and photographer who worked in Japan.

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Updated by Devon Hayley Farrell on 2022-03-16

Language of description

Script of description

Sources

Odo, David. 2015. The Journey of “a Good Type”: From artistry to ethnography in early Japanese photographs. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Press, Harvard University.

Wakita, Mio. 2013. Staging Desires: Japanese Femininity in Kusakabe Kimbei’s Nineteenth-Century Souvenir Photography, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag GmbH.

https://library.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/static/collections/epj/photographers.html

https://www.city.yokohama.lg.jp.e.sj.hp.transer.com/kurashi/kyodo-manabi/library/shuroku/photoalbum.html

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