From Istanbul to Yokohama

The Museum of East Asian Art opened in October 1913. It is celebrating its centenary with the exhibition ‘From Istanbul to Yokohama’ from 17 May to 7 September 2014. The photographic exhibition makes it clear how the eye of the European camera in the 19th century conquered the Islamic world as well as the countries of the Far East.

350 rare historical photographs by European and native photographers bring to life the travel routes taken by globetrotters to Asia. After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, commercial photographic studios established themselves in the major ports. They met the demand of tourists and globetrotters for travel photographs as souvenirs of the sights as well as of the people of foreign countries and cultures. Starting from London or Southampton, the most popular steamer routes led from Istanbul on the Bosporus via Alexandria, Port Said, Aden, Bombay (Mumbai), Colombo, Madras (Chennai), Kolkata, Singapore and Hong Kong all the way to Yokohama.

With this exhibition, the Museum of East Asian Art is presenting for the first time a selection from its collection of historic photographs. The founders of the museum, Adolf and Frieda Fischer, compiled the collection on their purchasing trips to East Asia. The painterly beauty of the photographs testifies to the high artistic standard of the early photo pioneers, but also casts light on the irreparable loss of old and established cultures.

In addition, in the context of the photographic exhibition the museum is presenting the collage ‘Paper and Memory 2012’ by the Iranian artist Alireza Darvish.

The opening of the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne on 25 October 1913 was a sign of the city’s openness to the zeitgeist of Modernism. The message of the museum’s founders was: the art of East Asia is in no way inferior to that of Europe, and indeed there is such a thing as ‘world art’, which can be measured by the same standards everywhere. The outbreak of the First World War put a temporary end to this modern, cosmopolitan impetus.

The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue in German and English.