The Tokyo Railway Depot

Just as elsewhere, Pictorialism in photography also became fashionable in Japan at the end of the 19th century. Pictorialists, such as Yukio Tagaki, championed photography as an independent art form, and were inspired stylistically by a painterly approach, manipulating their work with paintbrushes and paint in the darkroom. While the subject of this photograph is entirely modern, Tagaki primarily emphasized the image’s atmospheric quality.