Maeda Genzō (前田玄造) (1831–1906) was a Japanese

photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who uses a camera to make photographs. Duties and types of photograp ...

from northern

Kyūshū is the third-largest island of Japan's four main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands (i.e. excluding Okinawa and the other Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Islands). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regio ...

. In

Nagasaki , officially , is the capital and the largest Cities of Japan, city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Founded by the Portuguese, the port of Portuguese_Nagasaki, Nagasaki became the sole Nanban trade, port used for tr ...

he studied photography under Jan Karel van den Broek and J. L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort. Neither of these teachers was an experienced photographer, and their attempts to produce photographs were largely failures. Nevertheless, in turn they taught wet-collodion process to Maeda and his fellow students, who included Furukawa Shumpei, Kawano Teizō, Ueno Hikoma, and Horie Kuwajirō, among others. When Swiss photographer

Pierre Rossier Pierre Joseph Rossier (16 July 1829 – 22 October 1886) was a pioneering Swiss photographer whose albumen photographs, which include stereographs and cartes-de-visite, comprise portraits, cityscapes, and landscapes. He was commissioned by the ...

arrived in Japan in 1858 on a commission from ''

Negretti and Zambra Negretti is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Ettore Negretti (1883–after 1902), Italian footballer * Giovanna Negretti, American activist * Henry Negretti (1818–1879) of the firm Negretti and Zambra * Jacopo Negretti (14 ...

'', Maeda was instructed to assist and accompany him and to further learn photography. Maeda and other students escorted Rossier around Nagasaki, while the latter took photographs of priests, beggars, the audience of a

sumo is a form of competitive full-contact wrestling where a ''rikishi'' (wrestler) attempts to force his opponent out of a circular ring (''dohyō'') or into touching the ground with any body part other than the soles of his feet (usually by th ...

match, the

foreign settlement A foreign settlement (, pronounced "Gaikokujin kyoryūchi") was a special area in a Treaty ports, treaty port, designated by the Japanese government in the second half of the nineteenth century, to allow foreigners to live and work. After the visi ...

, and the group portrait of

Alexander von Siebold Alexander George Gustav von Siebold (August 16, 1846 – January 1911) was a German translator and interpreter active in Japan during the Bakumatsu period and early Meiji period. He was the eldest son of Japanologist Philipp Franz Balthasar von ...

and

samurai The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...

. Rossier believed that Pompe van Meerdervoort's failures in photography were due to a lack of the necessary chemicals and so he provided Maeda with a letter of recommendation to procure photographic apparatus and chemicals from a source in

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

. Both Maeda and Furukawa bought lenses, chemicals and albumen paper through Rossier. Maeda and Furukawa succeeded in taking a photograph with these materials on 28 October 1860, a day which is still commemorated in

Fukuoka is the List of Japanese cities by population, sixth-largest city in Japan and the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The city is built along the shores of Hakata Bay, and has been a center of international commerce since ancient times. ...

where the photograph was taken.

References

* Bennett, Terry. ''Early Japanese Images.'' Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1996. * Himeno, Junichi. "Encounters With Foreign Photographers: The Introduction and Spread of Photography in Kyushu". In ''Reflecting Truth: Japanese Photography in the Nineteenth Century'', ed. Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, Mikiko Hirayama. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2004. Japanese photographers Pioneers of photography 1831 births 1906 deaths People of the Meiji era {{Japan-photographer-stub