Sydney

Kagiyama, Ichiro

Photography

PXE 1757

YolgyvG9

Digitised

Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

1910

Contents
156 photographs (1 album) – black & white, 2 hand coloured

Contents
Cloth covered photograph album with string binding, compiled by Ichiro Kagiyama and containing 156 black & white photographs, two of which are hand coloured. One of the photographs is loose, while the remainder are glued to the album pages. Some photographs are captioned in English and/or Japanese and some are dated 1914 or 1915. The album includes photographs taken by Kagiyama and others, including commercially produced Japanese photographs.

Full title
Photograph album of views in Sydney, New South Wales, portraits of family and friends, and photographs taken in Japan, [1910s] / compiled by Ichiro Kagiyama

Description source
Some photographs identified by reference to Melissa Miles’ article Ichiro Kagiyama in early twentieth century Sydney, Japanese Studies, 2017

Object History
The album was bequeathed to one of Kagiyama’s long-time friends in Japan, remaining in that family’s possession until it was given to Professor Melissa Miles when she was in Takayama, Japan, researching Australian-Japanese photographic relations.

Published information
Melissa Miles’ article Ichiro Kagiyama in early twentieth century Sydney, Japanese Studies, 2017, examines the photographs and their significance in detail.
Contextual Information

Source
Presented by Prof. Melissa Miles, May 2019

Exhibited in
Shot : 400 photographs, 200 photographers, 3 centuries, State Library of New South Wales (October 2023 – October 2024)

Administrative / Biographical history
Ichiro Kagiyama was a Japanese photographer who lived in Sydney from the early to mid-twentieth century. There are differing accounts of his birthdate (sometime between 1882 and 1890 in Gifu Prefecture, Japan), and the circumstances and year of his arrival in Australia, but by the mid-1910s he was developing his skills and interest in photography. He joined the Photographic Society of NSW in 1914, attending outings to parks surrounding Sydney where members practised their craft, and exhibited his photographs in both Sydney and Japan. Kagiyama married Cicelia Howard Walker in Sydney in 1916. They had two children but were divorced in 1934. In that year, Kagiyama returned to Japan, where he remarried. On his return to Sydney he began working for ‘The Home’ magazine, which published his photographs between 1935 and 1938, in addition to operating his commercial photographic studio. Kagiyama and his wife left Australia in 1941 on board a Japanese repatriation ship. He worked as an interpreter for the occupying forces after World War II and operated a professional studio in Takayama. He died in 1965.

Reference:
Melissa Miles (2017) Ichiro Kagiyama in Early Twentieth Century Sydney, Japanese Studies, 37:1, 89-116, DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2017.1296753 (accessed 21 May 2019)

Photographs

Siobhan Campbell