Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Photography/History of Photography/Japanese photographers

WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles

This is great! You might want to consider cross-listing this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 13:07, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, um, maybe. The problem isn't the redlinks; it's among (and a disturbingly high percentage of) the bluelinks: the nominally here but actually missing. -- Hoary 13:36, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria

Here's what I've used as inclusion criteria so far:

• Having an article (or, for two people, half an article) in Nihon Shashinka Jiten (日本写真家事典, 328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers), edited by Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Tokyo: Tankō-sha, 2000.
  • The basis of the list, really.
• Provision of a potted biography within The History of Japanese Photography, ed. Anne Wilkes Tucker, et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
  • Some surprises here.
• Being the subject of much or all of one of the 40 volumes of "Nihon no Shashinka" (日本の写真家), Iwanami.
  • What's surprising is the number who are here but not in Nihon Shashinka Jiten.
• Having photos shown in, and a potted biography in, Neichā wārudo: Chikyū ni ikiru (ネイチャー・ワールド：地球に生きる) / Nature World: Life on Earth (Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 1997).
  • Added because the other sources are skewed toward "art", and, to a lesser extent, news/documentary.
• Being the subject of one of the 15 volumes of "Shōwa Shashin Zen Shigoto" (Asahi Shinbunsha, 1982–84)
  • At least one of these isn't included by any of the other criteria.

-- Hoary 13:43, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

This is an excellent start to dealing with this... troublesome phenomenon. I'd like to add the following Bennett works - comprehensive, very recent English-language sources for information on Japanese and other photographers in Japan:

• Bennett, Terry. Old Japanese Photographs: Collector's Data Guide London: Quaritch, 2006. ISBN 0955085241 (hard)
• Bennett, Terry. Photography in Japan: 1853–1912 Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 2006. ISBN 0804836337 (hard)

-- Pinkville 22:46, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Er, yes. Although I've never seen either of these, I hear good things about both. But (cough) adding them as criteria is the easy part; marking the photographers (and adding those not already included) is rather more tedious. And as I don't have access to a copy of either, this isn't a job I can help with.

More generally, I'd suggest going easy on adding more inclusion criteria. Agreed, they're not satisfactory. (Just think of the recognized, even celebrated photographers who are omitted: Kurata Seiji is one.) But the more ways there are into this list, the more redlinks there'll be. And this I think would obscure the more pressing problem: the number of dreadful bluelinks. -- Hoary 03:39, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Good points. But of the books in the first list, I only have access to the Tucker volume, and I can add and check photographers against the Bennett books. Pinkville 13:28, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, perhaps I didn't explain well. The Tucker book -- or more precisely a list derived from it by our good friend 20th Century Art (zenhan) -- has already been checked. The other four have been checked too.

If there were few redlinks and if the bluelinks actually led to articles, I could come up with several more lists of worthwhile people. But adding more lists isn't even on my back burner; it's in a ziplock in my freezer. Not that I want to deter others. -- Hoary 16:10, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Just to say, I'll probably be expanding some of these teeny articles based on Bennett. I have no desire whatsoever to expand the list. Heaven forfend! Pinkville 00:47, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

True bluelinks

The biggest problem here is making sure that every bluelink leads to a page that actually say something worth saying. Since most of the bluelinks are to people in Nihon Shashinka Jiten and since I have a copy of that, I ought to be able to turn a couple of hundred substubs into stubs or even starts. But I've only done half a dozen or so so far (they're listed near the foot of my user page), and at least three of these (Fukuhara, Fukuhara and Domon) are dreadful. I don't see myself averaging more than two a week from now on. So please do pitch in, all.

A personal worry is that a lot of these people have put out books that are good and available at a reasonabl price. The more I read about, the more I want to buy. But I have tons already. (There's the additional worry that I might start to want to get the expensive stuff. There's plenty of that around, for those with deep pockets. Fukase's Karasu may be monstrously expensive for some good reason, but that reason certainly isn't rarity.) -- Hoary 16:10, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

That other, more comprehensive list

I was thinking that it would be good to augment this list with the longer list of entries in Nihon no Shashinka. This is an encyclopedia of over eight hundred Japanese photographers, the huge majority of them deceased, but sprinkled with a very small number of senior living figures. (Most if not all of the latter will already be in this list of ours.) I have just noticed that 20th Century (Zenhan) Art has already listed them. What say? -- Hoary (talk) 10:08, 13 November 2008 (UTC)