Michael Moser: The Photographer Who Came to Japan at 16
Michael Moser (1853–1912) was an Austrian photographer who photographed Japan during the early Meiji period.
I first came across his name in a photobook called Japan 150 Years Ago in High-Resolution Images: The Late Edo and Early Meiji Periods.
The book contains many photographs reproduced from wet-plate glass negatives made more than 150 years ago.
Japan 150 Years Ago in High-Resolution Images / Yosensha, 2018
A 16-Year-Old Boy Arrives in Japan
Moser arrived in Japan in 1869, when he was just 16 years old.
He was born in a small mountain village in Austria and had only about six years of formal education. At 14, he met the photographer Wilhelm Burger and moved to Vienna to become his apprentice.
The following year, Burger was appointed photographer for an Austro-Hungarian expedition to East Asia, and Moser joined him as his assistant.
Michael Moser (1872) / Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)
They left Europe and travelled through Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa, Java, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai before finally reaching Japan. The journey took almost a year.
To make matters worse, Moser apparently suffered terribly from seasickness.
When the expedition ended, Burger returned to Austria, but Moser stayed in Japan. He seems to have tried to raise enough money for the journey home, but he had also grown fond of Japan. The thought of another long sea voyage, especially after his experience with seasickness, may have played a part in his decision to stay.
Life in a foreign country wasn't easy, though.
He worked as a waiter in a bar in Yokohama and later opened a photography studio with a partner. Unfortunately, the building was destroyed by a typhoon.
Around this time, he met John Reddie Black, who published the English-language newspaper The Far East in Yokohama. Through Black, Moser found work photographing different parts of Japan.
Despite his limited education, Moser learned Japanese, English and Italian during his time in Japan, along with some French. He eventually worked as an interpreter for the Japanese government and took part in the Vienna World's Fair in 1873.
It's quite a remarkable life. A boy who arrived in a distant country at 16 managed to support himself through photography, learn several languages and eventually work for the Japanese government.
Japan 150 Years Ago, Preserved on Glass Plates
The glass negatives that Burger and Moser photographed or collected are still preserved in Austria.
In the 2018 photobook, researchers from the Historiographical Institute at the University of Tokyo photographed these original plates with high-resolution digital cameras and converted the negative images into positives.
The collection includes not only photographs by Burger and Moser, but also works by Japanese photographers of the period, including Hikoma Ueno, Renjo Shimooka and Kuichi Uchida.
The research also revealed that glass negatives themselves were bought, sold and passed between photographers at the time.
Yokohama Station (1872) / Photo: Michael Moser / Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)
What really amazes me is the amount of detail in these photographs.
In one photograph of a Tokyo street, researchers were able to read the writing on a tiny wooden sign hanging from a building. That detail helped them identify exactly where the photograph had been taken.
Other details, such as graffiti on the walls of buildings, can also be seen by enlarging the images. These are things that might never have been noticed in prints made at the time.
The silver particles in wet-plate photographs are extremely fine, so grain is hardly noticeable even at high magnification. If the photograph is sharp and free from camera movement, an astonishing amount of detail can be recorded.
The ambrotypes I make in my studio use the same wet-plate collodion process. The difference is that an ambrotype is viewed directly on glass, while these glass negatives were made to produce photographic prints on paper. I've written about ambrotypes and wet-plate negatives in an earlier blog post.
I find it fascinating that modern technology allows us to discover information recorded on glass negatives more than 150 years ago that couldn't be seen before.
An Unexpected Coincidence
Recently, a visitor from Austria came to my studio for a portrait session. When I mentioned Moser, I was surprised to learn that they lived very close to the house where he grew up.
They had never heard of Moser, but they were also interested in analogue photography as a hobby, so we ended up having a great conversation about it.
An open spread from the photobook (Yokohama Station) / Photo by the author
Book Featured in This Article
Japan 150 Years Ago in High-Resolution Images: The Late Edo and Early Meiji Periods — The Glass Plate Negative Collection of Burger and Moser
Original Japanese title: 『高精細画像で甦る150年前の幕末・明治初期日本 ― ブルガー＆モーザーのガラス原板写真コレクション』
Edited by the Historical Photograph Research Project, Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo / Yosensha / 2018
About the technique of wet plate photography → What is wet plate photography?
Learn More About Wet Plate → 湿板Journal(blog)
See the actual work → Gallery
Want to try photography or experience it? → Fees/Workshops
