Kusakabe Kimbei

View of Mount Fuji. Hand-coloured albumen silver print, 1880.

Kusakabe Kimbei (日下部 金兵衛) (1841–1934) was a Japanese photographer. He usually went by his given name, Kimbei, because his clientele, mostly non-Japanese-speaking foreign residents and visitors, found it easier to pronounce than his family name.

Career

Kusakabe Kimbei worked with Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried as a photographic colourist and assistant before opening his own workshop in Yokohama in 1881, in the Benten-dōri quarter, and from 1889 operating in the Honmachi quarter. He also opened a branch in the Ginza quarter of Tokyo.

Around 1885, he acquired the negatives of Felice Beato and of Stillfried, as well as those of Uchida Kuichi. Kusakabe also acquired some of Ueno Hikoma's negatives of Nagasaki.

He stopped working as a photographer in 1912-1913.

Most of his albums are mounted in accordion fashion.

Gallery

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  Country children

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  Kago Travelling Chair

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  Wringing the Tealeaves on the Furnace

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  Writing Letter (also known as Letter Writer)

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  Yumoto lake at Nikkō, Tochigi (日光市), Japan

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  Buddha statue at Hakone, Japan

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  Bell of Daibutsu in Kyoto

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  Japanese woman in jinrikisha

References

• Bennett, Terry. Early Japanese Images (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1996), 50.
• Canadian Centre for Architecture; Collections Online, s.v. "Kusakabe, Kimbei". Accessed 14 April 2011.
• Musée Nicéphore Niépce; Collection du musée Niépce. Thé/Laque/Photographie. Accessed 3 April 2006.
• Nagasaki University Library; Japanese Old Photographs in Bakumatsu-Meiji Period: "Kusakabe, Kinbei". Accessed 30 May 2008.
• Turner, Jane, ed. The Dictionary of Art, vol. 18 (New York: Grove's Dictionaries, 1996), 534.
• Union List of Artist Names, s.v. "Kimbei, Kusakabe". Accessed 3 April 2006.

External links

• Old Photos of Japan. Kusakabe Kimbei. A selection of photographs by Kusakabe, with footnoted descriptive text. Accessed 28 May 2009.
• I Photo Central. Kusakabe Kimbei. A selection of photographs by Kusakabe. Accessed 30 May 2008.
• Some of Kimbei Kusakabe's photos. At the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives.