KITLV - 110644 - Kusakabe, Kimbei - Yumoto lake at Nikkō, Tochigi (日光市), Japan - circa 1890

Kusakabe Kimbei was a prominent Japanese photographer, born in Edo (now Tokyo) in 1841. He worked as an apprentice in a photographic studio before opening his own studio in Yokohama in the early 1870s. His studio specialised in producing hand-coloured photographs of Japanese landscapes, people and customs, which were popular with foreign tourists and collectors. Kimbei's work is notable for its technical skill and artistic composition, as well as its documentation of Japanese culture during a period of rapid modernisation and westernisation. He also collaborated with other photographers, including Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried, to produce albums and photo series. Kimbei's photographs were exhibited internationally, including at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He continued to work as a photographer until his death in 1934 at the age of 93. Today, his photographs are highly sought after by collectors and are held in major museum collections around the world.