Into the stillness - hand-tinted photographs and lantern slides by T. Enami, circa 1895-1910

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T. Enami (江南 信國 Enami Nobukuni, 1859 – 1929), the trade name of a Meiji period Japanese photographer. Born in Edo - now Tokyo - he was first a student of, and then an assistant to the well-known photographer Ogawa Kazumasa, before relocating to Yokohama, where he opened a studio in 1892. He became known as the only photographer of the period to work in all the popular formats, from the production of large-format photographs - which were compiled into what are commonly called "Yokohama Albums" - to small-format images such as stereoviews and glass lantern-slides; many of the latter were hand-tinted. His photographs went on to be reproduced in books and periodicals which were published all over the world. He survived the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923, and rebuilt his studio which had been destroyed by the quake and subsequent fire. After his death six years later, at the age of seventy, his first son Tamotsu maintained his father's archive and managed his studio until it was once again demolished in 1945 during the Allied bombing of Yokohama during the last months of World War II.