La Toilette

Art Historical Context

Suzuki Shin'ichi created *La Toilette* in the 1870s during Japan’s early Meiji era, a time when photography was rapidly adopted following the country’s opening to international trade. Working with an albumen silver print from a glass negative, the artist applied delicate hand-coloring to enhance the image’s tonal richness and visual appeal. This technique, common in Japanese export photography, transformed a straightforward photographic process into something closer to traditional painting, allowing the work to reach Western audiences eager for exotic imagery. The photograph depicts a female ...

About the Artist

Suzuki Shin'ichi · 1835–1919

Suzuki Shin'ichi (1835–1919) was a Japanese photographer who worked during a period of extraordinary transformation in both Japanese society and the history of the photographic medium. Active during the Meiji era, when Japan was engaged in a sweeping process of modernization and opening to the world, Suzuki belonged to the generation of early Japanese photographers who helped define what photograp...