Truemors
*****NOTE***** This is the only image of the #1 through #25 posted "Taisho Art Photographs" that I have "played with" by converting it from Black & White to Sepia. All the rest of the 25 images are posted "as is" in their original colors ******
[From here, this is the same Caption for all 25 TAISHO ART PHOTO images in this posting. Read this, and you can skip the rest, and just look at the pics!].
THIS IMAGE is one of many examples of a largely ignored facet of Old Japanese Photography -- a genre called "TAISHO ART" or "TAISHO PICTORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY". The pictorialism movement in Japan reached its peak during the reign of EMPEROR TAISHO (1912-26), thus the name attached to the genre. These are the photographs the buying public and tourists cared the least for. They sold in fewest numbers, had the fewest fans, and even now left at the bottom of the boxes at Old Photo, Ephemera, and Post Card shows held in North America and Europe. The reason being that 99% of Japan Photo collectors go mainly for the pretty girls, early ALBUMEN Street Scenes, Occupationals, and Studio Views....and at least here on flickr, go mainly for anything that shows the slightest hint of a female breast popping out of her Kimono. In any case, all of these images were the "throw aways" I've found at the bottom of the boxes over 30 years, after all else had been "Cherry Picked. I hope a few of you flickr folks who like the 'Art" aspect of photography will like some of these....all of them manipulated in camera and darkroom by anonymous Japanese photographers of 80 to 100 years ago -- who had neither the money or means to publish them widely, and had to settle for meager runs of multi-hued collotypes....that nobody really appreciated or wanted in the end. I dedicate these 25 slots on flickr to those lost, nameless souls of Japan whose eyes and cameras saw something more meaningful in the darkness and fog -- and in the patterns of nature and life. I hope you find some as moving or inspiring as I have.
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