Light over Deshima

The exhibition *Light over Deshima* takes you to nineteenth-century Japan. Through early photographs taken before 1870, we see a country in transition: portraits, landscapes, homes, and everyday moments captured by the first cameras to reach Japan from Europe.

Japanese people and the Dutch came into contact with one another on the artificial island of Deshima, a Dutch trading post. It was through this connection that the first cameras and instruction manuals arrived in Japan from Europe.

The photographs displayed in *Light over Deshima* are enlarged reproductions of images dating from before 1870. Portraits, domestic scenes, and landscapes reveal how Japan was slowly opening up to the rest of the world.

Discover nineteenth-century Japan through the dawn of photography!