Thursday, February 13, 2025 – EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY OF FLOWERS

By admin

FOR VALENTINE’S DAY

Ogawa Kazumasa’s Hand-Coloured

Photographs of Flowers (1896)

Thursday,   February 13, 2025

ISSUE #1395

The Public Domain Review

The stunning floral images featured here are the work of Ogawa Kazumasa, a Japanese photographer, printer, and publisher known for his pioneering work in photomechanical printing and photography in the Meiji era. Studying photography from the age of fifteen, Ogawa moved to Tokyo aged twenty to further his study and develop his English skills which he believed necessary to deepen his technical knowledge. After opening his own photography studio and working as an English interpreter for the Yokohama Police Department, Ogawa decided to travel to the United States to learn first hand the advance photographic techniques of the time. Having little money, Ogawa managed to get hired as a sailor on the USS Swatara and six months later landed in Washington. For the next two years, in Boston and Philadelphia, Ogawa studied printing techniques including the complicated collotype process with which he’d make his name on returning to Japan.

In 1884, Ogawa opened a photographic studio in Tokyo and in 1888 established a dry plate manufacturing company, and the following year, Japan’s first collotype business, the “K. Ogawa printing factory”. He also worked as an editor for various photography magazines, which he printed using the collotype printing process, and was a founding member of the Japan Photographic Society.

More images are available at:
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/ogawa-kazumasa-s-hand-coloured-photographs-of-flowers-1896/

COMING TO THE NYPL BRANCH ON
FEBRUARY 18TH

SAY NO  TO THE LOO

At this weeks RIOC Real Estate meeting, they introduced the idea of placing “Portland Loo” public bathrooms near the Firefighter’s Field/Tram area to serve the public.

RIOC staff did not provide and image.  I pulled one up on my phone and the reaction was very negative to this metal structure. 

Imagine this in the heat of summer or the cold of winter!

(reminds me of Paris Pissoirs of days past).
It is ugly and completely inappropriate to our island.

This or some similar design is appropriate similar to the comfort stations at Southpoint Park and Lighthouse Park.

CREDITS

THE PUBLIC DOMAIN REVIEW

The exquisite hand-coloured flower collotypes shown here were featured in the 1896 book Some Japanese Flowers (of which you can buy a 2013 reprint here), and some were also featured the following year in Japan, Described and Illustrated by the Japanese (1897) edited by Francis Brinkley

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

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rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com