Adolfo Farsari
1872-1887 (ca)
Kago

Albumen print, hand-coloured, on album page
Harvard Art Museum / Fogg Museum
© President and Fellows of Harvard College, Object Number: 2007.219.3
 
(Kjeld Duits, 19 March 2017)
"…this photo is usually attributed to Felice Beato (and dated between 1863 and 1877).
 
By the time Adolfo Farsari was active in Japan, the kago had already been largely replaced by the rickshaw, so it would have been a bit challenging (but not impossible) for him to shoot this photograph.
 
This miss-attribution is a result of Farsari, in a partnership with Kozaburo Tamamura, acquiring the Stillfried & Andersen studio in 1885. That studio had acquired Beato's studio, and his stock, in 1877. So there are quite a few Farsari albums featuring Beato and Stillfried images…"

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The photograph is used on the front cover of Eleanor M. Hight, 2011, Felice Beato: Photographer in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Selections from the Tom Burnett Collection, (New Hampshire: Museum of Art University of New Hampshire)
 
LL/73757