Japanese-Canadian Studio Portraiture
Hayashi Studio, “Untitled photograph,” no date
digital print and scan from glass-plate negative, courtesy of Cumberland Museum and Archives
A small exhibition tucked into a back gallery at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria looks at the once-thriving business of studio portraiture – with an unusual twist. The images are by Japanese-Canadian photographers in the Vancouver Island village of Cumberland in the early 1900s.
Mirror With Memory, on view until Sept. 4, shows a diverse range of residents sitting or standing in classic studio style in their best clothes.
Hayashi Studio, “Kiyoshi Shirimoto and his dog,” no date
digital print and scan from glass-plate negative, courtesy of Cumberland Museum and Archives
Six copies of a photo measuring five inches by seven inches cost up to $6 at a time when local miners earned $4 a day. But many Japanese, who had come to Canada seeking prosperity, thought it a good investment.
“The serious and dignified demeanor of the subjects of these photographs, and the appearance of being in full control of their destiny, if only for the moment of the flash of the camera, is the reassuring image that was sent to parents and relatives back home in Japan,” Grace Eiko Thomson writes in a book about Japanese-Canadian photography.
The images are roughly concurrent with those by Chinese-Canadian studio photographer, C.D. Hoy, who captured more rough-and-tumble images from Barkerville and Quesnel in the B.C. Interior. A show of his photographs, curated by Faith Moosang, toured galleries and museums across Canada between 1999 and 2005.
The Cumberland business was set up by Senjiro Hayashi in 1912, two decades after Japanese workers first began arriving in British Columbia. He operated the studio for a time, and it was then taken over by a man known only as Mr. Kitamura, and finally by Tokitaro Matsubishi.
The images, curated from some 800 glass-plate negatives in the Cumberland Museum and Archives, also capture community life: a baseball game, a memorial service for Japanese-Canadian servicemen killed in the First World War, and scenes from the region’s mines, where coal baron Robert Dunsmuir often hired Asian workers for half the regular rate.
Hayashi Studio, “Untitled photograph,” circa 1915
digital print and scan from glass-plate negative, courtesy of Cumberland Museum and Archives
The Cumberland studio’s last commission came in 1941: Japanese-Canadians living in the Comox Valley needed photographs for government identification cards. The following year, some 585 people were sent to internment camps in the B.C. Interior.
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
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