No. 536, Daibutsu at Kamakura, unknown maker from Japan

Teaching Gallery Label: “Eyes on Icons: Exploring Japanese Buddhism at the Spencer Museum of Art,” Apr-2008, Taakaki Kumagai This photograph depicts the seated Great Buddha (or Kōtokuin) (h. 49’), made around 1252, located in Kamakura. Children in different postures climb on the body of the Buddha, more specifically known as Amida, which is seated on an altar with offering vessels and lanterns. The photograph shows a more intimate relationship between the Amida statue and tourists in compared to the way the Amida statue is usually presented as an objectified art historical icon and cultural treasure today. This picture is a part of a souvenir album, which became a popular format after the 1870s among foreign photographers living in Japan. The notion of recording regional landscapes in Japan is comparable to Utagawa Hiroshige’s famous woodblock print series entitled Fifty-three Stations of Tokaidō (1833). Compared to the craft of woodblock printing in the nineteenth century, which had developed over centuries and came to be appreciated as fine art, the present photograph shows the incipient stage of photography in Japan.