Kern, Edward Meyer (attributed)

DESCRIPTIVE TITLE: American Cemetery, Gyokusen-Ji Temple, Shimoda, Japan

ca. 1855
daguerreotype
16.5 x 21.5 cm.: full plate
Museum Purchase: ex-collection Zelda P. Mackay
GEH NEG: 22095
69:0201:0057

NON-GEH NUMBER: Mackay # 500

BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES:
Romer, Grant. "Near the Temple at Yokushen...", --Image--, Vol. 29, no. 2, 1986 August. cover.//
Mulligan, Therese & Wooters, David. --Photography from 1839 to today: George Eastman House, Rochester, NY.-- Cologne: Taschen, 1999. p. 77.//

EXHIBITION HISTORY:
"Early Works of Photography", Japan, Tokyo, Metropolitan Museum of Photography, January 30 - March 25, 1992.//
"Gesichter Asiens: Historische Fotografien aus dem Museum für Ostasiatische", Germany, Cologne, Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, September 14 - November 6, 1994.//

FRAME: in gold leaf gesso frame

NOTES: Catalogued 7/91, DZ. Grant Romer, in his article "Near the Temple at Yokushen...", speculates that his early impression of the image might have attributed it to Eliphat Brown, Jr. who served as staff artist and photographer with the Perry Expedition to Japan, 1852-1854. Date assigned seems to negate this attribution. Will Stapp, writing for the publication --Early Works of Photography-- (1992, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography), states that "the daguerreotype had to have been made sometime in the thirty-month span between February 1855, when the last of Perry's men was interred, and July 1858, when a fifth American was buried in the plot." Stapp goes on to state, "It is possible that the image was taken by a Russian daguerreotypist, Alexandr Feodorovich Mozhaiskii, who is known to have been in Shimoda about this time. It is far more likely, however, that it was made by Edward Kern, an American artist aboard the United States naval vessel Vincennes, ..." "Kern was a civilian employed to create a visual record of the expedition."

SUBJECTS:
landscape, cemetery
landscape, figure in