Albumin print, Japan, hand-colored, Nikko Toshogu, a Temple, circa 1880

This historical photograph shows a magnificent, detailed, and architecturally fascinating masterpiece of early Japanese photographic art from the famous Meiji period, taken as an original albumin print mounted on cardboard. The albumin process used was the dominant photochemical technique of that era, in which egg white was used to bind the light-sensitive silver salts to the paper.

The motif shows the famous Nikko Toshogu Shrine in Japan, which is dedicated to the legendary Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. The photograph documents the highly complex wooden architecture, the masterful roof constructions, and the world-famous detailed carvings of the historical shrine complex. Since the buyers of these exclusive photographs at the time were almost exclusively wealthy travelers from Europe and North America on their Grand Tour, the titles were scratched or printed by the commercial studios directly into the photo negative in order to explain the location to the well-traveled customers in English. The absolute highlight of this artwork, composed in landscape format, is the elaborate hand-coloring. Japan was the absolute world leader in this precise hand-coloring technique, used to create the impression of a lifelike color photograph.

This culturally and historically valuable document originated around the year 1880. The rarity features the photograph dimensions of 26,6 x 20,5 cm mounted on a 28,1 x 21,8 cm original cardboard backing and is in good age-appropriate condition. Beautiful, even, slight toning and a waviness of the cardboard due to storage, partially somewhat yellowed cardboard margins, and a slightly faded image surface; as well as the original white caption at the very bottom margin: "45. Nikko Toshogu (a Temple)."