PONTING, Herbert G. Fuji San. Photographed by Herbert Ponting. Tokyo, K. Ogawa, 1905.
Oblong folio. Original illustrated card wrappers, bound with ties; pp. [6], 25 plates after photographs (one folding and with tissue guard); the fragile wrappers with restorations, one corner of the title-page repaired, text a little toned; good copy farely found in perfect condition.
Uncommon first edition, published by Kazumasa Ogawa, a celebrated Japanese photographer and innovator of photographic printing technology, these are Herbert Ponting's fine artistic renditions of Mount Fuji. Although Ponting's fame rest's on his photographic work during Scott's last Antarctic expedition he was considered soon to be the best British landscape photographer. Born in Salisbury (Wiltshire) in 1870 Ponting 'emigrated to California, USA, where he took up fruit farming, learned photography, and married. But the lure of travel, once he was armed with a camera, proved incompatible with domesticity. In 1901 he left his wife and young children and embarked on the first of many photographic trips to the Far East, where he visited Japan, Manchuria, Korea, and Russia, and recorded the Russo-Japanese War' (ODNB). Later he entertained the team of Scott's Antarctic expedition by showing lantern slides based on his Far East photo trips.
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