Abstract
Ambrotype is one of the oldest photographic techniques. Although it began to
disappear from the West in the 1860s, the Japanese favoured them throughout the
late nineteenth century. Many surviving photographs are portraits of Japanese people,
showing their choice of the technique. Interestingly, the Japanese ambrotype works had
three characteristics which remained until the twentieth century. They were wooden
boxes, glass plates, and achromatic images. Even though the ambrotype was replaced
with more economical techniques such as tintype using a tinned or enamelled iron plate
in the West, it remained with the above characteristics in Japan.
Three characteristics can be described as ‘things’ because they interact not only
with a material or an object but also with the people and social environment. Also,
it can be illustrated that the ‘things’ made Japanese people grow their fondness for
ambrotypes: an action of opening a wooden lid, which inspired a photo viewer with a
feeling of closeness between the viewer and the ambrotype portrait; the permanence
of glass, which might have affected eternity of the portrait that people wished; and the
achromatic image which must have given people reality and entity of the portrait that
had never faded.
