Hornel’s photographic eye and the influence of Japanese photography: part 2

Japanese photography

The first photographs of Japan were taken in the 1850s. As a rapidly developing technology, the camera was very much part of the modern world and Japanese photographers recorded infrastructure projects, building works and contemporary life (including the Emperor depicted in modern dress). Concurrently, studios started catering to western markets, and fed audiences with the well-established image of Japan as ‘a land of quaintly beautiful women and flowers and fans and sunshades’, as the Glasgow Herald put it in 1895.

Fig. 1 is an example of the kind of composition that sold well. Known as shashin and highly valued for their colour, detail and design, these photographs focused on Japanese tradition, costume and feudal customs. In this image, a woman is photographed in front of a generic studio backdrop. She wears a patterned kimono. Her arms, raised above her head, hold a traditional Japanese hat (kasa). This gesture provides an excellent view of the wide sleeves of the kimono and a glimpse of the obi knot at her back. Her pose, head tilted forward and body twisted to be viewed three-quarters side on with knees slightly bent, creates a perfect ‘S’ bend. This is echoed in the shape created by her left forearm and sleeve and is partially repeated by the ribbon of the kasa.

It’s a deceptively complex construction of shapes and reflects the asymmetrical and vertical aspect of the compositions found in most of the shashin in Hornel’s collection (figs. 2 and 3).

Hornel and the Japan Photographic Society

Many commercial photographers were members of the JPS, the first photo society in Japan. In its founding year (1889) the JPS had 56 members, including Burton and Kazumasa. Almost half of the membership (24) were not Japanese, and the organisation became a vital social centre for tourists. Hornel and Henry both became members in 1893. The JPS helped outsiders meet local people and gain access to theatres, exhibitions and modelling sessions. Members went to local theatres and tea-houses to watch dancers perform. They were also given the chance to photograph women in traditional costume posing in the privacy of a studio setting. Hornel took advantage of the activities and modelling sessions organised by the JPS, even buying a local photograph of Tokyo’s main Kabuki theatre as a memento (fig. 4).

In the collection at Broughton House (Hornel’s Kirkcudbright home) there are a number of glass plate negatives of Japanese girls and women, all focusing on specific actions and expressions (figs. 5 and 6).

Hornel was fascinated by the gestures and movement of Japanese dance, which he said was ‘made up of quaint posturing, dignified and refined movements, with delicate and artistic and pretty manipulations of the fan’. As a westerner, Hornel valued Japanese culture through his own domestic lens. This wider colonial attitude has been explored in detail by scholars and is not the direct focus of this article. Instead, we focus on the forms Hornel saw, namely the unique postures, gestures and movements of the hands, head and body.

Hornel’s Japanese photography

Hornel re-visited Japan in 1920 and the Broughton House collection contains three sets of images gathered on these trips. First, he purchased a large quantity of shashin showing women, interiors and landscape scenes (fig. 7).

The shashin gave Hornel a set of static, formulaic poses, depicting women and girls undertaking a tea ceremony or standing in a Japanese garden. Many of these were taken by JPS members known to Hornel (including Kazumasa and Kōzaburō Tamamura) and removed the obedient and submissive ‘ideal’ Japanese woman from modern life, placing her in a fantasy world created by western exoticism (figs. 8 and 9).

Both Kazumasa and Tamamura fed the market with images reinforcing the stereotype of Japan as a land of cherry blossom and geishas. Many of these images in our collection have been jabbed through with a pin or splashed with paint as Hornel presumably used them for reference while he painted in his studio (fig. 10).

The second type of image in Hornel’s Japanese collection were the result of studio modelling sessions organised by the JPS (figs. 5, 6, 11 and 12). These are attributed to Hornel but may have been taken by another photographer, as he was sent images of two Japanese women in 1920. The glass plate negatives capture women and girls posing informally in a basic studio setting with the ubiquitous and highly incongruous matting and backdrop. Their bodies are more languid than the static figures in the hand-coloured shashin. In what seems like an effort to extend the traditional poses found in commercial photography, these studio photographs provide the expression and dynamism that had captivated Hornel when he attended the dance halls and theatres.

These are similar to the third set of images, which capture women in informal poses but are highly structured (figs. 13 and 14). Groups of girls laugh with one another and single women engage with the camera in a confident manner. They’re posed with an ease that is not evident in the formal shashin and are more sophisticated than those attributed to Hornel. It’s not known if these were taken by JPS members for private use or whether they were available commercially. However, it is evident that the entire collection had a profound effect on Hornel’s paintings.

The Morton Charitable Trust has been funding fieldwork on the National Trust for Scotland’s photographic collections since 2014. In 2018–19, this work will further raise the profile of the collections through research, articles, talks and dedicated projects. The project will also involve the digitisation of the Margaret Fay Shaw photographic archive of mid-20th-century Hebridean life, leading to an updated database with high-quality images.