Title: The premise of fidelity
Description: The Premise of Fidelity puts forward a new history of Japanese visuality through an examination of the discourses and practices surrounding the nineteenth century transposition of "the real" in the decades before photography was introduced. This intellectual history is informed by a careful examination of a network of local scholars--from physicians to farmers to bureaucrats--known as Shohyaku-sha. In their archival materials, these scholars used the term shashin (which would, years later, come to signify "photography" in Japanese) in a wide variety of medical, botanical, and pictorial practices.
Subjects: History, Plant prints, Art and science, Photography, Realism in art, Botanical illustration, Japan, history, Printing, Medicinal Plants, Materia Medica, History, 19th Century, Medicine in the Arts
Places: Japan
Time periods: 19th century