(Man wearing straw raincoat and bamboo hat, Mt. Hiei) (蓑笠の男、比叡山)

KUROKAWA Suizan 黒川翠山

The setting is Mt. Hiei, in Kyoto. In this work, straight photography appears to be used to emulate the composition of a traditional landscape painting. Kurokawa photographed it using a long-focus lens, having posed a man wearing a straw rain-cape and hat in a subtly beautiful stand of Japanese cedar trees shrouded in fog. His use of an open aperture also, however, simulated the effect of linear perspective in Western-style painting. This masterwork is a superb example of early-period Pictorialism in Japan, which espoused pictorial effects unlike those of the West.

Collection of: Tokyo Photographic Art Museum
Title: (Man wearing straw raincoat and bamboo hat, Mt. Hiei)
Original title: (蓑笠の男、比叡山)
Artist Name: KUROKAWA Suizan
Year: 1906
Material / Technique: Gelatin silver print on developing-out paper
Accession number: 10101803
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum “Search the Collection”: https://collection.topmuseum.jp/Publish/detailPage/43511/