japan woodblock prints – film sequence

Learning from Utagawa Hiroshige’s work, I found many interesting composition techniques that can relate to [my] photography. These are things that I feel interesting and connected to me, or at least I feel please to look at.

If you haven’t known, Utagawa Hiroshige was a master ukiyo-e (woodblock printing art that highlights the pleasure scenes in life, such as beautiful landscape, pleasure activities, festivities, female beauty, flowers and folk tales) artist in Japan during Edo era. He lived from 1797 to 1858, created about 8000 woodblock art prints demonstrated mostly landscape, everyday scenes, fleeting weather conditions and festivities. He was considered the second greatest ukiyo-e artist, after Hokusai. His work even influenced Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters in Europe. “Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido” and “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” are two most brilliant and lasting series of Hiroshige.

I’m drawn into Hiroshige work because of the poetic and mundane feels in his work. To me, Hiroshige’s work is not as neat and perfect as Hokusai’s work, but it’s more calm, peaceful, intimate and soothing, like real memories from his own experiences walking pass those scenes in his endless journey looking to observe life and people around him. Maybe because of the imperfection in his work, his composition to be exact, I can feel the realness of life in that, like he painted/sketched as what he saw, not perfectly align things to the most pleasing angle/position in the frame. Here’re some notes I got learning from his prints:

First, Hiroshige usually put something [very] big or dominant as foreground in the frame.

Tago Bay in Suruga Province (Suruga Tago-no-ura), from the series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fuji sanjurokkei)”

Especially he liked to use tree trunk for this purpose.

Takata Riding Grounds, No. 115 from “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo”

Secondly, he usually put a tree trunk in the middle of the frame unapologetic. As we usually heard that in photography or painting, we should not put a tree (or big subject) in the very middle of the frame unless it’s a symmetrical composition. But look how Hiroshige do the opposite so beautifully below.

The Sumida Embankment in the Eastern Capital (Toto Sumida-zutsumi), from the series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fuji sanjurokkei)”

Then Hiroshige liked to put subjects at the edge of the frame to cut off the subjects but still enough for the viewers to imagine the shapes, scale or function of that subjects.

Fuji-view Teahouse at Zôshigaya (Zôshigaya Fujimi chaya), from the series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji”

Next, and you probably know by now that Hiroshige’s work includes complex layers and subjects. There’re always foreground, middle ground and background. He barely did a minimal composition.

Point number five is the use of negative space. As you can see in the photos below, he didn’t hesitate to leave a big chunk of negative space in the frame.

No. 38, Fukushima, from the series “The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidô Road”

Point number six, the use of subframe. Some are quite obvious but some are more subtle.

Okabe: Utsu Mountain (Okabe, Utsu no yama), from the series “Fifty-three Stations of the Tôkaidô Road”

Bonus point: he also has some interesting composition that I can’t help but think of wide-angle lens in photography term. You will know what I mean in three photos below.

Kinryûzan Temple, Asakusa (Asakusa Kinryûzan), from the series “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo”

And here’re some other amazing prints from Hiroshige that I personally love. Since you’re already here and get to know Hiroshige, enjoy these brilliant work!