Ueno Hikoma
| Ueno Hikoma | |
|---|---|
Self-portrait of Ueno Hikoma, c. 1870s
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| Born |
October 15, 1838 Nagasaki, Hizen Province, Japan |
| Died | May 22, 1904 (aged 65) Nagasaki, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Occupation | Photographer |
Ueno Hikoma(上野 彦馬?, October 15, 1838 – May 22, 1904) was a pioneer Japanese photographer, 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 nineteenth-century Japanese photography as a commercially and artistically successful photographer and as an instructor.
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 who in 1848 imported possibly the first camera in the country, a daguerreotype camera for the Shimazu daimyō, Nariakira.
Ueno Hikoma first studied Chinese classics; then in 1852, not long after his father's death, he entered the Nagasaki Medical College with a view to studying chemistry in order to help him run the family business, dealing in nitre and chintz dyeing. He eventually studied chemistry under the Dutch naval medical officer Johannes L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort (1829–1908) after the latter's arrival in 1857. Pompe van Meerdervoort, who had a camera and photography manual though 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 Genzō (1831–1906) and others. Soon after, Ueno's friend Horie bought a wet-plate camera. The purchase, which included photographic chemicals, was funded by the daimyō of Tsu Domain, Tōdō Takayuki, and the price was 150 ryō. Apparently the photographic equipment was of such interest to Ueno that he chose to become a subject of the Tsu Domain in order to have access to it at the domainal residence in Edo. and in 1861 Horie photographed Ueno at work in the domain's laboratory in Edo (now Tokyo). In 1862 Ueno and Horie co-wrote a textbook titled Shamitsu kyoku hikkei that comprised translated extracts from ten Dutch science manuals and which included an appendix titled Satsueijutsu [The Technique of Photography] that described techniques of collodion process photography as well as Nicéphore Niépce's asphalt printing method.
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