In what year did the photographer who was important for recording events and views estimate that half of all visitors to Yokohama were amateur photographers?
Farsari and other 19th-century commercial photographers generally concentrated on two types of subject matter: the scenery of Japan and the "manners and customs" of its inhabitants. Such subjects, and the ways in which they were literally and figuratively framed, were chosen to appeal to foreign taste; and the reason for this, apart from the photographer's individual aesthetics, vision and preconceptions, had much to do with economics. Photographs were expensive to make and accordingly expensive to buy. In 1870s Japan, a portrait photograph usually cost half a ryō "per head", about a month's pay for an artisan. Given such pricing, few Japanese could afford photographs and a photographer's clientele was largely drawn from the foreign residents of the European and American enclaves: colonial administrators, missionaries, merchants and the military. By the early 1870s, tourists had joined their number. To appeal to this clientele, photographers often staged and contrived the scenes they photographed, particularly the portraits depicting "manners and customs".In 1885, Charles J. S. Makin used some of Farsari's views to illustrate his travel account Land of the Rising Sun, Being a Short Account of Japan and the Japanese. As photomechanical printing was still in its infancy, it was common for artists and illustrators to create works derived from photographs. For example, Charles Wirgman's numerous engravings for the Illustrated London News were made from views by Wirgman's friend and sometime partner Felice Beato. Occasionally the link between a work of art and its photographic source material was less overt: Louis-Jules Dumoulin's 1888 oil painting Boys' Festival from the Bluff, Yokohama [sic] (now called Carp Banners in Kyoto) draws heavily from Farsari's photograph Gionmachi, Kioto (now often called View of Shijō-dōri, Kyoto); although the painted image strongly resembles the photographic source, the location of the subject has been changed in the title.
During the era of the collodion process, before the arrival of less demanding photographic technology (the gelatin silver process, photographic film, and smaller cameras) and the consequent rise of amateur photography, commercial photographers like Farsari had a particular importance for recording events and views. In Japan before 1899 such photographers were even more significant because the government required foreigners to obtain passes to journey to the interior, and commercial photographers based in Japan could more easily gain access and provide rare images of restricted areas. By 1889, however, Farsari estimated that about half of all visitors to Yokohama were amateur photographers; even if this was an exaggeration, the presence of increasing numbers of amateur photographers was obviously affecting the commercial photography business. To encourage amateur photographers to visit his studio and possibly buy his merchandise, Farsari provided free use of a darkroom.
1889