14161416
UKAI GYOKUSEN
forgotten since biographical details are carved on his
gravestone in Yanaka Cemetery, Tokyo. Born into a
wealthy samurai family, in Ishioka-shi, Ibaraki Prefec-
ture, Ukai worked as a merchant in the sake business
until 1831 when he decided to become a full-time art-
ist. Nothing is then known until he decides to move to
Yokohama in 1859 or 1860 with the intention of study-
ing photography. His gravestone inscription confi rms
he consulted the American, Orrin Freeman, who had
opened an ambrotype studio and was giving lessons. It
then seems that he purchased, for a considerable sum,
Freeman’s camera, equipment, and a series of lessons
before opening a portrait studio in Edo. At his studio,
named Eishin-do, he photographed over 200 members
of the aristocracy. In 1879 he was employed by the Gov-
ernment to photograph antiquities in western Japan. In
1883, Ukai unaccountably buried several hundred glass
negatives adjacent to his fi nal resting place in Yanaka
Cemetery. (One of his ambrotypes is held by the Yo k o -
hama Archives of History, Yokohama.)
Terry Bennett
UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHY
Nineteenth century interest in utilizing the power of
photography in all forms of scientifi c endeavour led the
Englishman,William Thompson (1822–1879), to speculate
on the use of photography as an inexpensive method of
assessing the damage to bridge piers in time of fl ood. In
February 1856 Thompson succeeded in making a weak col-
lodion negative of the sea fl oor of Weymouth Bay at a depth
by lowering a box containing a 5 × 4 inch plate camera on a
rope some eighteen feet to the bottom. Thompson described
his methodology in a paper “On Taking Photographic
Images Under Water,” published in the Journal of The
Society Of Arts, May 9th, 1856, which is reproduced in
Historical Diving Times, 19 (Summer 1997).
In 1866, the Frenchman, Ernest Bazin claimed to
have made underwater photographs at his marine obser-
vatory. Bazin used a form of diving cylinder to enable
him to descend below water with electric lights to illu-
minate his subject. However none of these images have
survived and it appears that none were ever made public.
While there are reports of photographs taken from a
submarine by the German Wilhelm Bauer and various
experiments by the Swiss F. A. Forel to determine the
penetration of daylight through water by photographic
means, the fi rst major publication to utilise photography
for the illustration of marine specimens was William
Saville-Kent’s The Great Barrier Reef of Australia, its
products and potentialities published in 1893. However
Saville-Kent’s specimens were not photographed with
an underwater apparatus.
The fi rst systematic approaches to underwater pho-
tography were commenced in 1886 the Frenchman
Louis Boutan (1859–1934) and his assistant Joseph
David (1869–1922). Born in 1859, Boutan obtained
his doctorate of science from the University of Paris in- In 1880, at the time of the Melbourne Exposition,
he was sent by the French Government to Australia to
study the embryology of marsupials. He was appointed
maître de conference at the University of Lille in 1886
before undertaking a mission to the Red Sea in 1890.
In 1893 Boutan was appointed professor at the Arago
Laboratories at Banyuls-sur-Mer, part of the University
of Paris. By the end of that year Boutan had established
the fundamentals of underwater photography.
Writing in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine
in 1898, Boutan recalled that he was fascinated by the
underwater landscape he found at Banyuls-sur-Mer
when invited to use the Laboratory’s diving suit. He
wrote “why, I asked myself, could I not succeed in mak-
ing a photograph at the bottom of the sea?” In a note in
Archives de Zoologie expérimentale et générale, Boutan
described the principal features of his underwater photo-
graphic apparatus, the plans for which had been devised
by his brother Auguste, an engineer and manufactured
by the fi rm of Alvergniat in Paris with anastigmat lenses
by Darlot. These had the form of a rectangular metal box
fi xed to a metal tripod having adjustable legs, external
controls for adjusting the shutter and diaphragm and
changing the specially varnished Lumiere plates and
a rubber balloon with which to adjust the buoyancy
to the whole. One of these cameras was illustrated in
the Century Magazine article together with several of
Boutan’s underwater images.
Initially Boutan found that back-scattering of light
and the lower contrast gave unsatisfactory images on his
“isochromatic” plates. After considerable experimenta-
tion he was able to obtain more satisfactory images by
interposing a blue fi lter in front of the camera lens.
Several ingenious methods were employed by Boutan
to illuminate his underwater scenes. In 1893 he collabo-
rated with a French electrical engineer, M. Chaffour,
to make the fi rst fl ash bulb. Chaffour used a thick glass
bottle, some 10cm in diameter, mounted with the neck
down. He placed a coil of magnesium ribbon inside
the jar before replacing the air with pure oxygen. An
electric current was used to ignite the magnesium rib-
bon, producing a very intense fl ash of light. This system
was not without its disadvantages. When ignited, the
magnesium produced a dense cloud of magnesium oxide
vapour which not only reduced the light output but also
coated the inner surface of the bottle. Moreover the high
temperature produced at ignition frequently caused the
bottles to explode, even underwater. Although only an
experimental model, the Chaffour fl ash established the
principles for all future fl ash bulbs while Boutan had
produced the fi rst underwater image made with fl ash.
A more reliable, if cumbersome, system of illumination