Pierre Joseph Rossier (16 July 1829 – 22 October 1886) was a pioneering Swiss photographer whose albumen photographs, which include stereographs and cartes-de-visite, comprise portraits, cityscapes, and landscapes. He was commissioned by the London firm of Negretti and Zambra to travel to Asia and document the progress of the Anglo-French troops in the Second Opium War and, although he failed to join that military expedition, he remained in Asia for several years, producing the first commercial photographs of China, the Philippines, Japan and Siam (now Thailand). He was the first professional photographer in Japan, where he trained Ueno Hikoma, Maeda Genzō, Horie Kuwajirō, as well as lesser known members of the first generation of Japanese photographers. In Switzerland he established photographic studios in Fribourg and Einsiedeln, and he also produced images elsewhere in the country. Rossier is an important figure in the early history of photography not only because of his own images, but also because of the critical impact of his teaching in the early days of Japanese photography.
Identity and origins Until very recently, little was known about Rossier; even his given name was a mystery. In his own time he was sometimes referred to as "P. Rossier" and at other times as "M. Rossier". Documents discovered in the Fribourg town archives finally proved that his given name was Pierre, and it can be assumed that the "M" in "M. Rossier" stood for "". He was long thought to be from France and while he was in Japan he was even referred to as an "Englishman";He is described as French by for example Yokoe (167). Even the Union List of Artist Names, a research database of the Getty Research Institute, lists "Rossier, M." as "probably British" (ULAN). however, recent research has revealed that Rossier was Swiss, born on 16 July 1829 in Grandsivaz, a small village in the Canton of Fribourg. He was the fourth of ten children of a farming family of modest means. At the age of sixteen he became a teacher at a school in a neighbouring village, but by 1855 he was issued a passport to visit France and England to work as a photographer.Bennett provides an interesting account of the research involved in revealing Rossier's identity and background. Most of what is now known about Rossier comes from Bennett's work. (Bennett's Internet article The Search for Rossier is cited below as "Bennett", while his books Early Japanese Images, Photography in Japan: 1853–1912, and Old Japanese Photographs are cited as "Bennett EJI", "Bennett PiJ", and "Bennett OJP", respectively.)
At some point after leaving Switzerland and arriving in England, Rossier was commissioned by the firm of Negretti and Zambra to travel to China to photograph the Second Opium War (1858–1860). It may be that the firm considered Rossier's Swiss citizenship an asset for such a voyage, that his country's neutrality might help him find passage aboard either British or French ships. Taking into account the high costs and uncertainty incurred by the firm and the potential hazards for Rossier himself, this was an important commission.Bennett.
Photographing in Asia
Rossier was in Hong Kong in 1858, and he soon began taking photographs, mostly in and around Canton (now Guangzhou).Bennett. Worswick places Rossier in China from 1857 to 1859, but does not provide any further information (Worswick, 146). In November 1859 Negretti and Zambra published a set of fifty of Rossier's views, including stereographs. These received favourable reviews in photographic periodicals of the day. In 1858 or 1859 Rossier travelled to the Philippines where he visited and photographed the Taal Volcano. Rossier was in Japan by 1859, producing photographs first in Nagasaki, then in Kanagawa, Yokohama and Edo (now Tokyo); he was the first professional photographer to arrive in Japan.Yokoe, 167. One of the photographs Rossier took during the summer of 1859, while in Nagasaki, was a portrait of Philipp Franz von Siebold's son Alexander and a group of samurai from the Nabeshima clan.This photograph is in the collection of the Siebold Memorial Museum in Nagasaki (Himeno, 22).
At the end of June 1860, Rossier was in Shanghai, and it is likely that he visited the city in an attempt to gain permission to accompany the Anglo-French military expedition that had already arrived in northern China and thereby fulfill his commission to document the Second Opium War.The British and French military forces were already assembling at Talien Bay and Chefoo, respectively, in June 1860 (Harris, 17) and it is known that Rossier was in Shanghai on 27 June 1860. There is a further possibility that Rossier visited Shanghai in order to procure photographic chemicals (Bennett). If so, he was unsuccessful; both forces had already hired photographers to document the mission. The British forces were accompanied by the photographers Felice Beato and John Papillon, and the French by Antoine Fauchery, Lieutenant-Colonel Du Pin, and possibly also by Louis Legrand.Bennett; Thiriez. Papillon produced images taken between Canton and the Taku Forts but became ill and was evacuated before completing his mission. Photographs of the expedition by Fauchery have not been positively identified, but probably include twenty-four stereographs of the French forces in Canton, Shanghai, Tientsin and Peking. No evidence has been found that either Du Pin or Legrand actually took photographs during the expedition. Thiriez, 6–7. Although Rossier failed even to embark on the mission he had been hired to document, he remained in East Asia for some time longer.
By October 1860, Rossier had returned to Nagasaki, where he took photographs of the harbour on behalf of the British Consul, George S. Morrison, for which Rossier was paid $70.In a letter dated 13 October 1860, Morrison wrote, "... considering that M. Rossier's time is specifically devoted to other purposes, and that he was occupied with them for several days... as he is not a tradesman here for the sale of photographs, [I] was not in a position to bargain..." (Bennett). Seventy dollars was a substantial sum; to put it in some perspective, fourteen years later Henry Smith Munroe, an American employee of the Japanese government, was considering buying a complete set of 500 photographs by Uchida Kuichi that cost $250 or three-quarters of Munroe's monthly salary as a well-paid foreign advisor (Dobson, 20; Clark, Fraser, and Osman, 137–138). Although Rossier's photographs of Japan were advertised by Negretti and Zambra on at least two occasions in 1860, the firm did not publish them until October or November 1861.In the edition of 28 May 1860 of The Times there appeared an advertisement for a "full coloured" stereograph of "Japanese ladies in full dress" by Rossier. An advertisement in The Times, 3 October 1860, referred to the "expected" arrival of "photographs from Japan – A case of rare and curious photographs of the scenery of this interesting country, and illustrative of the manners and customs of the Japanese tribes, which have been executed by a special artist sent out for the purpose by the enterprising firm of Negretti and Zambra of London". Bennett speculates that Negretti and Zambra may have delayed publishing the images because of problems with the quality of the negatives, either because they were damaged in transit or because of Rossier's known difficulties in finding the correct photographic chemicals in Asia (Bennett). Five of Rossier's views of Japan appeared earlier, in George Smith's book, Ten Weeks in Japan, in April 1861, and that July, eight of Rossier's Japan photographs appeared in the form of lithographs in Henry Arthur Tilley's book, Japan, the Amoor, and the Pacific.Bennett PiJ, 49. An 1861 edition of the Illustrated London News included several engravings under the collective title Domestic Life in China, the images having been taken from Rossier's stereographs.Bennett OJP, 119. One of the photographs Negretti and Zambra had advertised in 1860 became the first commercial photograph taken in Japan to be published, and is the earliest known hand-coloured Japanese photograph.This being the photograph titled "Japanese ladies in full dress" (Bennett PiJ, 47; 49, fig. 45).
Thanks to a number of documents of the time, it is now certain that Negretti and Zambra'''s photographs of China and Japan were taken by Rossier, but for many years it was thought that they might have been taken by either Walter B. Woodbury, who also had dealings with Negretti and Zambra but was based in Batavia (now Jakarta), or Abel Gower, who was an amateur photographer in Japan. The Leiden University photograph collection includes a portrait, allegedly of Gower, signed "P. Rossier", and in 1859 Rossier and Gower shared passage aboard HMS Sampson from Nagasaki to Edo.Rather than Gower, the portrait sitter is now considered to be John MacDonald, a member of the British Legation (Bennett PiJ, 45; 117, fig. 141).
Teaching photography
Rossier first arrived in Japan in 1859, at a time when early experiments in photography were being conducted in Kyūshū, particularly in Nagasaki. The city was the centre of rangaku, the study of Western science, and it was here that physicians Jan Karel van den Broek and J. L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort were instrumental in teaching their Japanese students not only medicine but also chemistry and photography.More precisely, it was the Dutch enclave of Deshima within Nagasaki harbour that provided the locale for these studies, with the experiments in photography beginning in the mid-1850s. Similar research began about the same time in the nearby Satsuma han at Kagoshima (Himeno, 18, 20–21). Neither Van den Broek nor Pompe van Meerdervoort was an experienced photographer, and their attempts to produce photographs were largely failures.Even with the help of the user's manual that accompanied the camera he had imported, it seems that Van den Broek never made a satisfactory photographic image and he decided that only an experienced photographer would be able to teach the use of the camera. Pompe van Meerdervoort was hardly more successful; one result of his experiments was described by Matsumoto Jun as "a meagre black shadow" (Himeno, 21–22). Nevertheless, in turn they taught wet-collodion process photography to Keisai Yoshio,Keisai was an uncle and teacher of the photographer Uchida Kuichi (Himeno, 24–25). Furukawa Shumpei, Kawano Teizō, Maeda Genzō, Ueno Hikoma, and Horie Kuwajirō, among others.Himeno, 21–22.
On his arrival in Japan, Rossier presumably introduced himself as a photographer despatched to Japan by Negretti and Zambra, perhaps thereby inspiring a misconception, for while he remained in the country he was often referred to as an "English" photographer. In Nagasaki, Rossier was assisted in his work by Maeda Genzō, who had been instructed to accompany the "Englishman" and to further learn photography.Matsumoto Jun ordered Maeda to assist Rossier. Yet another link between Matsumoto and photography dates from some point between 1857 and 1859 when he adopted the 13-year-old future photographer Uchida Kuichi (Bennett EJI, 54). With Maeda and other students escorting him around the city, Rossier took photographs of priests, beggars, the audience of a sumo match, the foreign settlement, and the group portrait of Alexander von Siebold and samurai. Rossier believed that Pompe van Meerdervoort's failures in photography were due to a lack of the necessary chemicals and so he provided Maeda with a letter of recommendation to procure photographic apparatus and chemicals from a source in Shanghai. Both Maeda and Furukawa bought lenses, chemicals and albumen paper through Rossier.Himeno, 21–22. Maeda and Furukawa succeeded in taking a photograph with these materials on 28 October 1860, a day still commemorated in Fukuoka where the photograph was taken (Himeno, 22)