Adolfo Farsari (1841–1898) was more than a photographer; he was an extraordinary figure whose life and work exemplify the dramatic entanglements of travel, empire, art, commerce, and cultural encounter in the long 19th century. Born in a small northern Italian city under Habsburg rule, Farsari’s journey carried him from Europe into the defining conflicts and transformations of his era – including the American Civil War and the rapid Western opening of Japan – and ultimately left his mark on how the world came to see one of the most intriguing societies of its time. His photographs, especially the hand-coloured images of landscapes, portraits, and customs from Japan, helped shape both foreign perceptions of Japan and, retrospectively, how Japan saw itself during its Meiji-era modernization.
Origins: From Vicenza to the New World
Adolfo Farsari was born on February 11, 1841, in Vicenza, a city in the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, which at that time was part of the Austrian Empire. His early education and upbringing in Vicenza laid the groundwork for an adventurous and restless spirit, one that would lead him far from the familiar landscapes of northern Italy. At age 18, in 1859, Farsari began a career in the Italian military, a path that introduced him to discipline and the broader geopolitical struggles of a unifying Europe.
Three years later, as Europe was convulsed by its own conflicts and transformations, Farsari chose to emigrate to the United States in 1863. His reasons, including both personal ambitions and ideological commitments, reflected the turbulence of the moment. A fervent abolitionist, Farsari enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War, serving as a cavalry trooper in a New York State volunteer regiment until the war’s end.
His time in America was pivotal and transformative. It placed him directly in one of the most consequential struggles of the 19th century, one that would deeply shape the civic and cultural landscape of the United States itself. While in America, he married an American woman and became a U.S. citizen. However, this marriage would eventually fail, and by 1873, having lost his way in a personal sense, Farsari left his wife and children — a decision that marked both rupture and the beginning of a new life chapter.
Arrival in Japan: Yokohama and the Commercial Eye
After leaving America, Farsari embarked on a new chapter that would define his legacy. By 1873, he had moved to Japan, a nation that was then rapidly transforming following the end of its centuries-old isolation under the Tokugawa shogunate. Settling in Yokohama, Japan’s treaty port and a hub for foreign commerce and cultural exchange, he entered into a partnership with E. A. Sargent. Together they founded Sargent, Farsari & Co., a business that dealt in a wide array of imported goods, publications, maps, and views of Japan — the latter often photographic images of landscapes, sites, and people that catered to foreign residents and travellers.
The scope of their enterprise was wide; it included stationery, magazines, guidebooks, dictionaries, and — crucially — visual representations of Japan. These early “views” became a staple of the foreign and tourist trade and helped cultivate an appetite among Western visitors for images of the country. This was a moment when photography was still a relatively new medium, and images were not simply records but commodities: souvenirs, collectables, and tools of cultural mediation.
Even before formally becoming a photographer himself, Farsari was deeply involved in the circulation of visual culture. He produced maps of places like Miyanoshita in the Hakone region and that of Yokohama itself, and later published guidebooks, including successive editions of Keeling’s Guide to Japan, as well as his own Japanese Words and Phrases for the Use of Strangers. These publications entrenched him in the infrastructure of travel, tourism, and cultural translation that defined early Meiji-era Yokohama.
Self-Taught Photographer: From Commerce to Art
Although involved with visual goods for many years, it was not until 1883 that Farsari taught himself photography. Starting from scratch and armed only with books, he taught himself how to take and develop photographs — an impressive feat given the technical complexity of late 19th-century photographic processes. As he later wrote in a letter, “taking pictures is just a mechanical thing … I have had no real teachers, I have learned everything from books.”
Two years later, in 1885, he made his decisive move into professional photography by acquiring the Japan Photographic Association — also known as the Stillfried & Andersen studio — in partnership with Japanese photographer Tamamura Kozaburō. The acquisition included a stock of photographs and negatives, notably some by the influential British-Italian photographer Felice Beato. Farsari’s decision to purchase this studio placed him at the center of Yokohama’s thriving photographic scene and gave him access to some of the earliest and most striking visual records of Japan made by foreigners.
With this studio — which he soon operated as A. Farsari & Co. — Farsari became one of the major figures in what came to be called Yokohama shashin (literally “Yokohama photography”), a distinctive style of commercial photography that blended Western photographic techniques with aesthetic cues from Japanese artistry, especially the woodblock print tradition of ukiyo-e.
Yokohama Shashin: Style, Technique, and Cultural Exchange
To understand the significance of Farsari’s work, one must understand the context of Yokohama shashin. This was not a monolithic style, but rather a broad commercial phenomenon that included studios operated by foreigners and Japanese alike. These photographers photographed landscapes, architecture, cultural practices, and staged “customs” portraits designed to appeal to foreign tastes. The results were often lavishly hand-coloured, expensive works that went into albums and became prized souvenirs for Western travellers.
What made these images striking was not simply their technical excellence but the fusion of visual traditions. The compositions often echo Japanese artistic sensibilities, while the medium itself remained rooted in Western photographic processes. Hand-colouring, a painstaking technique that involved applying pigments to black-and-white albumen prints, was central to their distinctive look. Farsari employed and trained teams of painters in his studio to colour photographs with extraordinary care, a strategy that both distinguished his products and reflected a commercial understanding of the marketplace.
As with other studios, the subject matter often fell into two broad categories: landscapes and “manners and customs” — scenes intended to represent daily life, traditional dress, and customs. These themes catered strongly to the tastes of foreign consumers, who were often eager to return to Europe and America with tangible mementos of their travels. Photography here served as both art and anthropology, albeit one shaped by the expectations and prejudices of its audiences.
Portraiture, Landscapes, and the Making of Memory
One of the remarkable achievements of Farsari’s studio was its hand-coloured portraiture and its evocative landscapes. Portraits of people in their traditional dress, images of courtesans on verandahs, and scenes from temple complexes captured a Japan on the cusp of modernity. His photograph of the Great Buddha (Daibutsu) at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, for example, stands as an enduring visual archive of how sacred sites were encountered and represented in the late 19th century.
Farsari’s images were deliberately composed to evoke particular responses from viewers. They were not neutral records; they were carefully curated — sometimes staged — to highlight the exotic, the picturesque, and the culturally “other.” But they also captured genuine moments of place and ritual, and thus became critical visual documents of the Meiji era.
His technique and aesthetic judgment earned praise from contemporary voices. Photographer and critic W. K. Burton, writing in the 1880s, declared that Farsari’s colour photographs were among the finest he had seen anywhere. Similarly, articles in journals like the Photographic Times and American Photographer commended the technical and artistic qualities of his images.
Triumphs and Trials: Fires, Competition, and Renewal
Running a large-scale photography enterprise in 19th-century Yokohama was not without its challenges. In 1886, a devastating fire destroyed Farsari’s studio and many early negatives, including those he had acquired from Beato and Stillfried. Rather than marking a downturn, this catastrophe became a moment of transformation. Farsari spent roughly five months traveling throughout Japan, making new photographs to rebuild his portfolio. This period resulted in a renewed and expanded collection of views that he later reissued once the studio reopened.
By the late 1880s, the Yokohama photographic market was becoming more competitive, with Japanese photographers increasingly asserting themselves in the field. Yet Farsari’s studio remained one of the largest and most respected in the port city, employing dozens of artists and technicians and capitalizing on his ability to offer both high-end quality and appealing visual narratives.
Cultural Legacy: Shaping the Image of Japan
The photographs produced by Farsari and his studio were widely distributed, reproduced, and referenced in books and periodicals of the time, and they helped form the visual imagination of Japan for foreign audiences. These images made scenes of Kyoto’s temples, Edo-period architecture, rural landscapes, and everyday life familiar to people who had never set foot in Asia. In this sense, the work of Farsari was not simply artistic but cultural and diplomatic in effect: it shaped expectations, memories, and understandings in significant ways.
But Farsari’s influence was not limited to foreign audiences. His photographs also influenced how Japanese perceived their own country’s changing landscape and culture during a period of intense modernization. By framing scenes of tradition against the backdrop of rapid societal transformation, these images contributed — sometimes ambiguously — to debates about identity, progress, and heritage.
Return to Italy and Closing of a Chapter
After nearly two decades in Japan, Farsari’s long journey came full circle. He departed Yokohama in 1890 and returned to his native Italy, where he remained until his death on February 7, 1898.
Although Farsari left Japan, the studio he founded continued beyond his departure. Under the management and eventual ownership of Japanese photographers like Tsunetarō Tonokura and later Tokutarō Watanabe, A. Farsari & Co. remained active into the early 20th century, adapting to a changing photographic landscape even after the foreign studios that once dominated Yokohama had largely disappeared.
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