IMAGES OF LOTUS LAND: THE LIFE and CAMERA WORK OF

* T. ENAMI *

JAPAN'S ENIGMATIC PHOTOGRAPHER

Of the MEIJI and TAISHO ERAS

King of the Stereoview, Master of the Lantern-Slide, Prolific, Anonymous Contributor To the World of Meiji-era Yokohama Album Views, Dedicated Street Photographer, and Honored Alumni of National Geographic Magazine

NOBUKUNI ENAMI (1859-1929)

Enami opened his Yokohama studio in APRIL, 1892.

    The images he took between then and his death in 1929 are still found throughout the world in books, magazines, original albums, and one-off photographs of all sizes and subjects (including 3-D).

    Enami's commercially numbered and titled images found in two known catalogs eventually exceeded that of his more famous elder in the business, Kimbei Kusakabe, the only other 19th Century Japanese photographer for whom a surviving commercial catalog exisits.

ILLUSTRATED BACKGROUND DATA ON ENAMI IS FOUND BELOW.

ENAMI'S PHOTOGRAPHIC ACCOMPLISHMENTS ARE LISTED AND ILLUSTRATED HERE

The formal portrait of Japanese Photographer T. Enami seen three images above was possibly taken in 1909 --- dated by the outdoor group portrait shown below (fourth photo down) published in association with it. If so, Enami would be about 50 years old, with 20 years of photographic activity still ahead of him.

The original silver prints of both of these images have been lost, and are reproduced here from halftone illustrations published in K. Ogawa's 1913 book SOGYO KINEN SANJU NEN SHI [A Celebration of Thirty Years in the Photography Business] --- a commemorative book detailing the history of K. Ogawa's commercial photographic enterprises that, among other things, provided portraits of the photographers and associate members of the K. Ogawa Alumni Association.

This rare book was re-discovered in 1994 by professional photographer and photo-historian Torin Boyd . He was kind enough to send me copies of these halftone illustrations, which look just fine here...considering they are both SCANS of a XEROX of HALFTONES made from a long lost PHOTOGRAPH !

In 2006, Terry Bennett became the first to republish the formal Enami portrait in his best-selling book **PHOTOGRAPHY IN JAPAN - 1853-1912**