A Timeless Vision of Japan Photographed in 1900

Man of the world, insatiable traveller, and fashion photographer, Baron Adolphe de Meyer visited Japan in spring 1900 with his wife Olga Caracciolo. From Buddhist temples in Kyoto to Shinto sanctuaries in Nikko and Ueno Park in Tokyo, Adolphe de Meyer translated his travels into photographs. Louis Vuitton Publishing compiled these rare visual testimonies from the 20th century of a country previously unknown in a magnificent book simply entitled Japan — Adolphe de Meyer.

Born in Paris, Adolphe de Meyer received an education that opened him up to the world. A resident of Paris, London, and New York, he spent summers in Venice and Constantinople and winters in Saint-Moritz. In spring 1900, Adolphe de Meyer and his wife travelled to Asia for their honeymoon. Over the months that followed, they discovered China, India, Sri Lanka, and Japan.

Photos revealing another side of Japan

A keen user of artificial lighting and staging in his fashion photography, Adolphe de Meyer captured an entirely different side to Japan in his photographs that present, in natural light, a harmonious and vaporous vision of nature, devoid of any human presence. Only a few silhouettes can be distinguished, abstractly, in the distance, and often seen from behind.

On his return to London, Adolphe de Meyer continued to inject his fashion photographs with a Japanese aesthetic. Even in the restricted framework of an indoor studio, he filled his images with details, patterns, and light and shade effects, in a silent echo of his lasting memories of his travels to Japan. While the majority of the photographs of Japan were destroyed by Baron Adolphe de Meyer himself, several were carefully preserved and can now be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and in this book published by Louis Vuitton.

Fashion Eye, Japan — Adolphe de Meyer (2019), a book of photographs by Adolphe de Meyer, is published by Louis Vuitton Publishing.