Charles Leander Weed

from Thomas Houseworth & Co.'s Oriental Scenery series, mammoth-plate albumen print, mounted, titled and numbered in an unidentified contemporary calligraphic hand in ink and with the publisher's credit and studio address in letterpress on the mount, the publisher's decorative credit in letterpress on the reverse, matted, 1867 

Collection of Van Deren Coke

Acquired by Hans P. Kraus, Jr., New York, from the above, 1989

Acquired by the Quillan Company from the above, 1989

Jill Quasha, The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs (New York, 1991), pl. 25 (this print)

Grading this albumen print on a scale of 1 to 10 - a 10 being a print that has rich, deep dark tones and highlights that retain all of their original detail - this print rates 10. The print's tones are a rich red/brown. When the print is examined closely, a small area of warm-toned discoloration is visible in the center of the image—this may possibly be an imperfection in paper. In raking light, a faint scuff can be seen in the upper left portion of the print, as can a faint circular impression just below and to the left of center, and a minor handling crease above and to the left of the center of the bottom edge. These issues do not undermine the fine appearance of this impressive mammoth-plate print. The photograph is on a thin stiff board mount. The mount is age-darkened overall, and there is a loss in its upper right portion. There are four stains on the mount adjacent to—but not affecting—the image. The mount is soiled on the reverse, and darkened from contact with a wood backboard.
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This sweeping view of the Nagasaki harbor is one of the earliest large-format photographs of the Orient extant.  Charles Weed, most often associated with his mammoth-plate views of Yosemite, is believed to have been the first photographer to bring a mammoth-plate camera to Japan.  Weed's work from Japan and China is exceedingly rare; at the time of this writing, few other large photographs from this series have been located.

At the mid-point of the nineteenth century, the nation of Japan was mysterious and remote. The Middle East had been mapped by both camera and tourist since the first days of photography, and the British colonization of India insured that the camera was established in that region as well.  Although limited trade with Japan was initiated by the Dutch in the seventeenth century, the country remained largely isolated, by its own design, until Commodore Matthew Perry demanded entry in 1853.  Perry's fleet arrived at Uraga, at Tokyo Bay, surprising the Japanese, who had expected the Americans to follow the established custom of the Dutch and other traders, allowed ashore only through the port of Nagasaki. 

Weed's photograph shows the superb natural nineteenth-century harbor in its prime, prosperous and dotted with ships.  The first Western ship to visit Japan, from Portugal, arrived at Nagasaki in 1571.  In the seventeenth century, the Dutch and Chinese were granted the privilege of trade, but again, only through Nagasaki.  When Weed arrived in the 1860s, the city would have been a cosmopolitan mixture of Japanese, Dutch, Portugese, and Chinese merchants, with Americans soon to follow.  The port's thriving industries in ship-building and fishing established its reputation through the twentieth century.

Charles Leander Weed could claim many 'firsts' in his long and highly successful career.  In the 1850s, he was a camera operator in two of San Francisco's earliest daguerreian studios, initially with G. W. Watson and later with the celebrated Robert Vance.  He was among the first photographers to work in Yosemite, producing a series of mammoth-plate views that may have preceded those by the better-known Carleton Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge.   In 1860, he opened a gallery in Hong Kong, and in 1865, took the first mammoth-plate views of Hawaii.  Terry Bennett, in his Photography in Japan, 1853 - 1912 (Tokyo, 2006), charts Weed's travels between China, Japan, and San Francisco throughout the 1860s, summarizing his many achievements and describing him as 'energetic and restless' (pp. 115-16).   

Surprisingly little of Weed's work survives today.  His views of Yosemite are far scarcer than those of his contemporaries, and photographs from his Oriental Series, published by Thomas Houseworth & Co., are even scarcer.  Two inland mammoth-plate views of Nagasaki, owned by The Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, are reproduced in Bennett, op. cit., fig. 138, and in Richard Pare's Photography and Architecture: 1839 - 1939 (Montreal, 1983), pl. 95.