Japanese Dream is the second exhibition which Noire gallery presents in the Khepri space. A collection of albumen prints coloured by hand, which transport us directly into the heart of the Meiji era (1862-1912), on the trails of the first travellers who found themselves in front of the wonders of an ancient civilisation, which remained for a long time almost inaccessible.
It is the period of the Yokohama School which aims to unite photography, the most avant-garde artistic form of that time, with the tradition of Japanese graphics.
The exhibition moves around the idea of the woman, as it was formed in the European image of the nineteenth century : sublime beauty without age, true and real icons of an idealized model of female Asian beauty, in which the eye of the photographer seems to be searching for the secret which animates the fluctuating ”kingdom of the gheisa”.
Amongst the works shown those of Kusakabe Kimbei stand out, an artist who began her career as a colourist photographer and as an assistant to the great photographers Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried, before opening her studio in Yokohama.
