Untitled

This untitled woodblock print reflects the influence on Kiyochika of photography and the emerging visual culture of Meiji-era Japan. Photographs of the period shared with Kiyochika's kosen-ga a reliance on tonal contrast to convey form and space, and it is possible that his compositional strategies were partly informed by the photographic image. In abstract terms, both media depend on the graduation from light to dark as the primary means of describing three-dimensional form on a flat surface. Kiyochika's print translator this photographic logic back into the woodblock medium, using bokashi gradation as an equivalent to photographic tonal range. The result is a print that occupies an unusual position within both the ukiyo-e tradition and the visual culture of its era.