Vintage: Japan Daily Life by Arnold Genthe (1908) | MONOVISIONS

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Arnold Genthe was born in Berlin, Prussia, to Louise Zober and Hermann Genthe, a professor of Latin and Greek at the Graues Kloster (Grey Monastery) in Berlin. Genthe followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a classically trained scholar; he received a doctorate in philology in 1894 from the University of Jena, where he knew artist Adolf Menzel, his mother’s cousin.

After emigrating to San Francisco in 1895 to work as a tutor for the son of Baron and Baroness J. Henrich von Schroeder, he taught himself photography.[1] He was intrigued by the Chinese section of the city and photographed its inhabitants, from children to drug addicts, Due to his subjects’ possible fear of his camera or their reluctance to have pictures taken, Genthe sometimes hid his camera. He also sometimes removed evidence of Western culture from these pictures, cropping or erasing as needed.

Back in 1908, Genthe spent six months in Japan, documenting the everyday life of Japanese during the Meiji period. After his death, the Library of Congress acquired approximately 20,000 never before seen photographs from his studio, and buried in the collection were these rare photos from 1908 Japan, during the Meiji period.