1021
Snyder, Joel, “Aesthetics and Documentation: Remarks Con-
cerning Critical Approaches to the Photographs of Timothy
O’Sullivan.” Perspectives on Photography. Ed. P. Walch and
T. F. Barrow. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1986, 125–50.
Snyder, Joel, American Frontiers: The Photographs of Timo-
thy O’Sullivan, 1867–1874. Millerton, NY: Aperture, Inc.,
1981.
Trachtenberg, Alan, “Naming the View.” Reading American
Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker
Evans. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989, 119–63.
OEHME, CARL GUSTAV (1817–1881)
German instrument maker and photographer
Carl Gustav Oehme was born in Berlin in 1817, and
trained as a mechanic or mechanical instrument maker.
He is reported as having visited Paris in 1840 where
he met Daguerre, and learned the rudiments of the
daguerreotype process from him, returning to Berlin
in 1841 where he was one of the fi rst artists to exhibit
daguerreotypes in Germany.
While in France, he met fellow German L. Philipp
Graff (1814–1851), an optical instrument maker and
later professional photographer, and Graff also con-
tributed daguerreotypes to the 1841 exhibition. Oehme
and Graff went on to become two of the most important
early photographers in Berlin.
Oehme opened a studio in Berlin in 1843 at No. 20
Jagerstrasse, from where, trading as Gustav Oehme, he
produced daguerreotype portraits for many years. He
was still using the process into the later 1850s.
Some sources suggest that he also operated a por-
trait studio in Hamburg 1854/5, but this has yet to be
confi rmed.
Oehme’s surviving daguerreotypes, predominantly
1/6th plate size, evidence masterful control of soft yet
directional lighting, and a sensitivity towards posing
which gave his group portraits a natural appearance
which belies the long exposures necessary.
John Hannavy
OGAWA KAZUMASA (1860–1929)
Japanese photographer
Ogawa Kazumasa (the characters used in his given
name are also read Kazuma or Isshin) was born Au-
gust 15, 1860, in present-day Saitama prefecture, near
Tokyo. He was the second son of Harada Shôzaemon,
a samurai and retainer of the Matsudaira clan, and his
wife Miyoko. At the age of three Ogawa became the
adopted son of Ogawa Ishitarô, a common practice in
nineteenth-century Japan.
Ogawa had a strong interest in English, and was fi rst
introduced to photography around age 13 through his
English tutor, a British missionary. Around the same
time he also had a chance to visit the studio of Uchida
Kuichi, then the premier photographer in Tokyo, which
further piqued his interest. Ogawa became familiar with
the wet collodion negative process while serving as an
apprentice to the photographer Yoshiwara Hideo for six
months during the mid-1870s. In 1877, just seventeen
years old, he opened his fi rst photography studio in
Gunma Prefecture with a second-hand quarter-plate
camera that he used to take carte-de-visite portraits.
Despite the limited availability of quality photographic
chemicals and supplies, it appears that this studio was
quite successful. However, Ogawa closed it in 1880
and resolved to go abroad to further his photographic
knowledge.
Ogawa made his way to the United States as a sailor
on an American frigate, spending eighteen months in
Boston and Philadelphia in 1883–1884. He studied
portraiture, carbon printing and plate making, and col-
lotype in Boston. In Philadelphia he studied dry plate
techniques and manufacturing with John Carbutt, who
developed the first commercial dry plate negative.
Ogawa sent news of the latest advances in American
photography back to Japan, where they were published
in Shashin shimpô (Photographic News), Japan’s fi rst
photography periodical. He also shipped dry plates,
which were just starting to be used in Japan around this
time. The information he conveyed to other Japanese
photographers experimenting with dry-plate technology
was instrumental in helping them successfully master
the technique.
After returning to Japan, Ogawa established a studio
in Tokyo in 1885 called the Gyokujunkan, and thereafter
rapidly became involved with a number of innovative
photography-related businesses and projects. Ogawa
had several appointments and commissions that gave
him access to an unusually wide range of subjects.
In 1886 he was appointed photography instructor for
the army, in a division that was then part of the Land
Survey Department. In 1888 he participated in a survey
of Japanese cultural assets under the auspices of the
government. His affi liations with the military and the
government enabled him to photograph such varied
subjects as the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese
war, the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, the palace
buildings of the Forbidden City, Beijing, and antique
sculpture, paintings, and architecture of ancient temples
in Kyoto and Nara. His style was also varied, ranging
from straightforward documentary photographs to
beautifully composed artistic images that prefi gured a
modernist aesthetic.
Perhaps even more noteworthy than the diversity of
his subject matter, however, was his infl uential role in
developing photographic printing techniques within
Japan and in promoting a domestic photographic