Staging Japanese landscape for the emperor’s eye: Uchida Kuichi’s landscape photography (1870s)

In this thesis I will explore a set of landscape photographs made by Uchida Kuichi (1844-1875) in the 1870s. Uchida had become photographer under a Japanese master who had received education in the field of chemistry from a Dutch institute in Nagasaki. He was requested to document the Meiji emperor’s grand tour of Japan in 1872. The pictures Uchida took were not a reportage in the modern sense of the word. Uchida Kuichi’s landscape photography shows the synthesis of early modern ideas about landscape depiction in a modern medium. The photographer seems to have made deliberate choices to soften the innate quality of this medium to produce ‘modern’ or ‘western style’ depiction with a vanishing point perspective, and he has avoided using a downward looking point of view. His landscape photos mostly have a level point of view and the vanishing point perspective is ‘flattened’ by stressing the horizontals and/or the vertical lines. Instead of linear perspective, depth is created by...Show moreIn this thesis I will explore a set of landscape photographs made by Uchida Kuichi (1844-1875) in the 1870s. Uchida had become photographer under a Japanese master who had received education in the field of chemistry from a Dutch institute in Nagasaki. He was requested to document the Meiji emperor’s grand tour of Japan in 1872. The pictures Uchida took were not a reportage in the modern sense of the word. Uchida Kuichi’s landscape photography shows the synthesis of early modern ideas about landscape depiction in a modern medium. The photographer seems to have made deliberate choices to soften the innate quality of this medium to produce ‘modern’ or ‘western style’ depiction with a vanishing point perspective, and he has avoided using a downward looking point of view. His landscape photos mostly have a level point of view and the vanishing point perspective is ‘flattened’ by stressing the horizontals and/or the vertical lines. Instead of linear perspective, depth is created by having large objects in the foreground. His landscape of the Nagasaki bay is to be understood symbolically, suggesting a harmonious relationship between modernity (a modern steam factory and foreign trading steam ships) and tradition (a Shinto shrine and a traditional village), while the gaze of the two traditionally dressed men under large pine trees (a traditional symbol of auspiciousness) is out towards the sea that in de Meiji era was opened. Thereby, he seems to have underlined the “Japaneseness” of the landscape in an era where the idea of state or nation was upcoming. The series can be read as showing a national landscape where modernity was firmly rooted in tradition, with the emperor – whose gaze was materialized – as the personification of continuity.Show less

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Staging Japanese landscape for the emperor’s eye: Uchida Kuichi’s landscape photography (1870s)