When photography was invented in the nineteenth century, critics were quick to point out its inability to capture the "natural colours" of the world. That limitation was finally overcome in 1907 with the invention of the Autochrome, the first practical process capable of faithfully reproducing colour. Until then, photographic prints had been painstakingly hand-coloured with fine brushes.
About a decade after Japan opened its doors to foreigners in 1853, photographers such as Felice Beato and Kusakabe Kimbei drew inspiration from the refined palette of woodblock prints by Hokusai and Hiroshige, hand-colouring their photographs in a similar style. Early travellers were captivated by these richly coloured, exotic images.
Like most photographers of his generation, Nicolas Bouvier worked primarily in black and white. Until the late 1970s, colour photography was often dismissed as vulgar or overly commercial. Yet, the writer found himself fascinated by the glowing neon signs that illuminated the city at night. His book Japan includes ten pages of Kodachrome photographs—a modest number in a volume of 192 pages. At the time, full-colour printing was prohibitively expensive. Only a handful of contemporary colour prints survive, along with eleven binders of slides from Bouvier's travels. Some of these images are being exhibited here for the very first time.
In 2025, around thirteen billion images circulate online every day. For Photo Opportunities, French-Swiss artist Corinne Vionnet scours the internet for thousands of tourist snapshots of famous landmarks. She then merges them into a single image, layering countless stereotyped visions of the world into one photograph. Hovering between the illusion of a unique elsewhere and the traces of a shared visual memory, her work also invites us to reflect on the growing problem of overtourism.
In Fujikawaguchiko, residents have grown weary of the disruptive behaviour of tourists willing to do almost anything to capture the perfect selfie with Mount Fuji in the background. In response, local authorities installed a large black screen to block the view of the mountain.
Should we see this as a symbol of the way we now consume the world?