Focus: Asia

In the decades following the invention of photography in 1839, European photographers traveled to Asia, documenting cultures and landscapes with a realism previously unknown. Employing cumbersome large format cameras and delicate paper or glass plate negatives, these intrepid photographers captured the first images of Japan after it had been closed to the West for over 200 years; the first images of the forbidding Himalayan Mountain passes; the first images of bound-footed women and of grand golden temples.

Group of Samurai
photographer: Kusakabe Kimbei (1841-1934)
circa: 1880
location: Yokohama, Japan
hand painted albumen print

  thanks to plep