Foreigners Employing a Camera (Gaikoku shashin kagami no zu), from an untitled series of activities of foreigners

Yokohama prints (Yokohama-e) were published in 1860-61 in response to the curiosity of the Japanese public about the exotic foreigners now living in Yokohama, the city just south of Edo (modern Tokyo) that had been opened as a treaty port for foreign trade in 1860. The artist Yoshikazu, a student of Utagawa Kuniyoshi, was one of the major artists designing Yokohama-e. The untitled series to which this design belongs shows the fascinating activities of the foreigners, either in Japan or at home in their own countries.

The photographer shown here is none other than Matthew Brady. Yoshikazu based his design on an engraving in the June 6, 1860 issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, showing Brady in the reception room of the Willard Hotel in Washington, photographing gifts brought by the Japanese ambassadors who had come to Washington to ratify the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation between Japan and the U.S. Yoshikazu faithfully reproduced the vaulted ceilings of the Willard Hotel but altered the picture to focus on the photographer and added additional figures such as the delighted child.