Kusakabe Kimbei

Kusakabe Kimbei (日下部金兵衛) 1841 - 1932.

From around 1860 to 1900, Yokohama-shashin (Japanese albumen prints sold in Yokohama) became very popular. These photographs depicting Japanese landscapes, people and culture were popular souvenirs for tourists at the time.

Considered to be one of the most underrated Japanese photographers of the 19th century, he worked with Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried from the 1860s as an assistant and photographic colourist before he opened his own studio many years later in Yokohama in 1881.