Albumin print, Japan, hand-colored, Oharame female traders, Kyoto, circa 1880

This historical photograph shows an ethnographically highly precious and socially historically fascinating scene of daily life from Japan from the 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 documents a group of 5 traditional female traders from the rural surroundings of Kyoto, historically referred to as Oharame. The women are depicted on an unpaved country road against a backdrop of dense bamboo groves and tall trees, carefully transporting tightly tied cloth bundles containing goods such as firewood, charcoal, or flowers on their heads directly to the urban markets. To stabilize the heavy loads, they wear characteristic white head coverings over their dark kimonos, which are accentuated by hand-colored, strikingly bright red belts. Since the exact authorship is officially considered unknown due to the lack of a complete signature, the piece is attributed to the major commercial studios of the Yokohama school, which staged these folkloric genre scenes for the Western traveling public. 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 spectacular document originated in the period around 1880 to 1890. The antique rarity features the photograph dimensions of 26,5 x 20,5 cm mounted on a 28,8 x 22,8 cm original cardboard backing and is in good age-appropriate condition with an even, slight toning. It shows a waviness of the cardboard due to storage, partially somewhat yellowed cardboard margins, and a slightly faded image surface, as well as the partially cropped original serial number 493 within the photo negative at the bottom left margin.