Japan. Dreams of eternity.
National Printing Office| N° d'inventaire | 23875 |
| Format | 34 x 48 |
| Détails | 132 p., publisher's hardcover. |
| Publication | Paris, 2012 |
| Etat | nine |
| ISBN | 9782330011192 |
In 1863, less than ten years after the opening of Japan to the West, obtained by Commodore Perry, Felice Beato joined his compatriot Charles Wirgam in Yokohama and founded a company of photographers. The views of Japan that he collected in his two albums published in 1868, Native Types and Views of Japan, created a shock for the Western public and contributed greatly to the lasting fascination that this civilization thus revealed would exert on them. Inspired by Japanese painting and prints, Beato delicately hand-colored his prints, both out of concern for truthful detail and to make more tangible the harmony and poetry, hitherto unseen, of the places, rites and people. Beato in turn influences local artists belonging to the "Yokohama school" or simple photographers, who restore an idealized, precise and immutable image of their country, imitating the techniques and style of their Western model.
With its exceptional folio format and visual quality, the book gives pride of place to indigenous artists who evoke the ineffable gentleness of landscapes, natural or man-made; especially that of the feminine universe - aristocrats, geishas, children, adolescents. Yet warrior, the masculine universe is grace itself, sumptuous, garlanded uniforms, bodies decorated with tattoos. The hardness that one senses in the work and the days is in turn adorned with a hieratic nobility that sublimates it without denying it. Haikus by Bashô, contemporary (Princess Masako) or medieval (Nukata no Okimi, Kasa no Iratsume) poetesses, precepts of Zen Buddhism and the art of the samurai underlie, like silk threads, the delicate architecture of this dream of eternity.
In 1863, less than ten years after the opening of Japan to the West, obtained by Commodore Perry, Felice Beato joined his compatriot Charles Wirgam in Yokohama and founded a company of photographers. The views of Japan that he collected in his two albums published in 1868, Native Types and Views of Japan, created a shock for the Western public and contributed greatly to the lasting fascination that this civilization thus revealed would exert on them. Inspired by Japanese painting and prints, Beato delicately hand-colored his prints, both out of concern for truthful detail and to make more tangible the harmony and poetry, hitherto unseen, of the places, rites and people. Beato in turn influences local artists belonging to the "Yokohama school" or simple photographers, who restore an idealized, precise and immutable image of their country, imitating the techniques and style of their Western model.
With its exceptional folio format and visual quality, the book gives pride of place to indigenous artists who evoke the ineffable gentleness of landscapes, natural or man-made; especially that of the feminine universe - aristocrats, geishas, children, adolescents. Yet warrior, the masculine universe is grace itself, sumptuous, garlanded uniforms, bodies decorated with tattoos. The hardness that one senses in the work and the days is in turn adorned with a hieratic nobility that sublimates it without denying it. Haikus by Bashô, contemporary (Princess Masako) or medieval (Nukata no Okimi, Kasa no Iratsume) poetesses, precepts of Zen Buddhism and the art of the samurai underlie, like silk threads, the delicate architecture of this dream of eternity.