Ueno Hikoma
Ueno Hikoma (上野 彦馬, Ueno Hikoma)[1] (1838–1904) was a pioneer Japanese photographer who was born in Nagasaki. He is noted for his fine portraits, often of important Japanese and foreign figures, and for his excellent landscapes, particularly of Nagasaki and its surroundings. Ueno was a major figure in 19th century Japanese photography as a commercially and artistically successful photographer and as an instructor.
Background, youth, and preparation
Ueno Hikoma's family background perhaps provided an early impetus for his eventual career. A number of family members had been portrait painters. Furthermore, he was the son of Ueno Toshinojō (also known as Ueno Shunnojō) (1790–1851), a merchant in the employ of the Shimazu clan (also known as the Satsuma clan) who was thought until recently to be the first person to take a daguerreotype in Japan, in 1841. In fact, in 1848 Toshinojō imported a daguerreotype camera for the daimyo of the Shimazu clan, Nariakira, and this was possibly the first camera in the country.
Ueno Hikoma first studied Chinese classics; then in 1852 he entered the Nagasaki Medical College where he studied chemistry under the Dutch naval medical officer Johannes L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort (1829–1908). Pompe van Meerdervoort, who had a camera and photography manual but little experience as a photographer, also instructed Ueno Hikoma in photography.
It was only after his contact with Swiss photographer Pierre Rossier (1829 – ca. 1890) that Ueno decided to pursue a career as a photographer. Rossier had been commissioned by the firm Negretti and Zambra to photograph in Asia and he worked in Japan from 1859 to 1860. He was only in Nagasaki for a short time, but while there he taught wet collodion process photography to Ueno, Horie Kuwajirō (1831–1866), Maeda Genzõ (1831–1906) and others. Soon after, Ueno's friend Horie Kuwajirō bought a wet-plate camera and in 1862 the two co-authored a textbook called Seimikyoku Hikkei [A Handbook to Science] which included an explanation of methods of collodion process photography.
Career
In 1862 Ueno opened a commercial photographic studio in Nagasaki that operated until the end of the century and he also began importing cameras. At first the business was unsuccessful, but it gradually grew, becoming popular with Japanese and foreign notables and receiving mention in guidebooks, in Edmond Cotteau's Un touriste dans l'Extrême-Orient (1884) and in Pierre Loti's novel, Madame Chrysanthème (1887). Still in the early days of this imported technology, Ueno overcame the reticence of many Japanese to be photographed and took portraits of such figures as Sakamoto Ryōma, Katsu Kaishū and Takasugi Shinsaku. During their visits to Japan Ueno photographed Ulysses S. Grant in 1879 and the Russian Crown Prince (later Tsar Nicholas II) in 1891.
Ueno worked with Felice Beato, among other prominent photographers, and at his studio he taught several important nineteenth-century photographers, including Uchida Kuichi (1844–1875), Tomishige Rihei (1837–1922) and Ueno Yoshima. Eventually, Ueno opened branches of his photographic studio in Vladivostok in 1890 and in Shanghai and Hong Kong in 1891.
In addition to portraits, Ueno produced many images of Nagasaki and its surroundings. He also photographed the transit of Venus across the sun in 1874 for an American astronomical observation mission. In 1877, the Japanese government commissioned him to take battlefield photographs in southwest Japan during the Satsuma Rebellion.
He exhibited photographs in at least two World Expositions, the Vienna World Exposition of 1873 and the World Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, at which he won an award for “Good Taste and Artistic Finish”.
To begin with Ueno practiced wet-plate photography, but by about 1877 he began using imported Belgian dry plates. In spite of the popularity of hand-coloured photographs, Ueno's photographs are usually uncoloured. Some of Ueno's negatives were probably purchased at some point by the Japanese photographer Kusakabe Kimbei, as these images appear in the latter's albums.
Commemoration
In 2000 the “Kyushu Sangyo University Photo Contest” established the “Ueno Hikoma Award” to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the founding of Kyushu Sangyo University. The award is intended to discover and nuture emerging photographers.
Note
- ^ Ueno's name is sometimes rendered “Uyeno Hikoma” (a matter of an old romanization system, not of a different pronunciation); and with either spelling it is often written in reverse order, with given name first and family name last.
References
- Anglo-American Name Authority File, s.v. “Pompe van Meerdervoort, J. L. C.”, LC Control Number n 85206160, cited 24 November 2005.
- Anglo-American Name Authority File, s.v. “Tomishige, Rihei”, LC Control Number n 78032752, cited 24 November 2005.
- Bachmann Eckenstein Art & Antiques, cited 3 April 2006.
- Bennett, Terry. Early Japanese Images (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1996), 48–50, 56.
- Bennett, Terry. “The Search for Rossier: Early Photographer of China & Japan”, cited 3 April 2006.
- Canadian Centre for Architecture; Collections Online, s.v. “Uyeno, Hikoma”, cited 3 April 2006.
- Clark, John. Japanese Exchanges in Art, 1850s to 1930s with Britain, continental Europe, and the USA: Papers and Research Materials (Sydney: Power Publications, 2001), 89, 334–335.
- Kyushu Sangyo University; Kyushu Sangyo University Photo Contest; Ueno Hikoma Award, cited 3 April 2006.
- Musée Nicéphore Niépce; Collection du musée Niépce. Thé/Laque/Photographie, cited 3 April 2006.
- Nagasaki University Library; Japanese Old Photographs in Bakumatsu–Meiji Period, s.v. “Ueno, Hikoma”, cited 3 April 2006.
- Tucker, Anne Wilkes, and others. The History of Japanese Photography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 38–39, pl. 15, repr.