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farsari-roisin: two men, one destiny    When we heard about pioneering photographer Adolfo Farsari, we decided to write an article about him. This Italian was Japan's first photographer and, to a large extent, he was the creator of the land of the rising sun's image and iconography. When we were looking for documentation, we wondered if there were an similar personalities closer to home. And there are, we do have our own Farsari: Mr Lucien Roisin, who was born in Paris and lived in Catalonia. They lived at different times, in different places and in different conditions, but they had the same passion. Here's the two men's story. FARSARI

Adolfo Farsari was born in 1841 in Vincenza. Today that's in Italy, but then it was in the Austro-Hungarian empire, in the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia. He started off in the army, but then wrote some texts criticising the power of the aristocracy. So he wasn't going to make too many uniformed friends and, just in case, set off for America in 1863. In line with his progressive ideology, he fought as a voluntary cavalryman in the civil war against slavery. After the war, he got married. But the relationship wasn't a success and, in 1873, he left his wife and two children, setting sea again, this time for Japan. At Yokohama, along with the merchant E.A. Sargent, he set up a company selling dictionaries, guide books, maps, magazines and photographs. He quickly realised that products connected with journeys, particularly photographs, were selling more and more. He set up another company with the photographer Tamamura Kozamuro and started travelling all over Japan taking photographs. But sepia photographs weren't enough for Farsari, so he decided to make use of traditional Japanese painting techniques as a complement to his work. He started taking on painters to colour his photos. It was a complete success. These individually prepared photographs were hugely popular. Everywhere he went, they wanted to take Farsari's work home with them. His images also became the favourite of the Japanese rich. He received a lot of commissions and, after splitting from his partner Kozamuro, he set up a big new company: A Farsari & Co. He taught his techniques to new photographers, he sent them to the farther corners of Japan and took on the best colourists. As well as the artists, he always used the best materials, which is why the work is so well conserved today and is also one reason why it was expensive. Before long, Farsari was named Japan's official photographer. So great was his success that the emperor asked him to photograph the Imperial Palace which, until then, had been closed and forbidden to common people.
In 1886 a fire destroyed Farsari's studio and all his negatives. He took up his camera and spent five months going all over Japan taking photos. In 1887 he opened a new studio and, by 1889, he had 1,000 landscapes and portraits.
Farsari never married again, but he did have a daughter, Kiku, with a Japanese woman. As the years went by, his desire to return to Italy grew and grew. The young man who had criticised the aristocracy did something which happens quite often: he made a special album for the king of Italy and wrote a letter to explain that he wanted to go back to Italy. To decorate that return, he requested a knighthood to open the doors of Italian aristocracy to him. It's not clear whether he achieved that or not, but in 1890 he and Kiku got onto a ship and went back to the land of his birth. In 1898 he died in his home town, Vincenza.
His photography was commercial. He never intended to do anthropological work but, for better or for worse, Farsari's colour photos created the image of 19th century Japan. The Japanese are in debt to an Italian photographer for the image of their history and memory.

ROISIN

If Farsari's life was an adventure, Roisin's was a non-stop expedition. He didn't take to sea and go to unknown lands, but he did collect the countrysides and people around him tirelessly. He was born in Paris in 1876. We don't know much about his youth. He knew the father of the Lumière brothers, who were to go on to make the first film. It is when he got hold of one of the photographic cameras that the father made that Roisin's biography begins. He started by taking artistic photos of the people and surroundings of Montmartre. When he realised that most of the people buying his work were foreigners and tourists, he had an idea. He started revealing whole series and selling them as postcards. In a few years, Roisin's studio became the most important manufacturer of postcards in France. In 1917, in the middle of the First World War, hardly anyone in France was writing postcards. A businessman called Toldrà decided to contract Roisin for three years to take the postcard business to Catalonia. Shortly after Roisin reached Barcelona, nearly all his family died in a bombardment. He took his brought his nephews to Barcelona and started work. He spent the next years travelling around the Iberian peninsula and taking photos of villages, towns, cities and the countryside.

They opened La Casa Postal shop in Barcelona and, with his nephews' help, the business prospered. Roisin's archive also went through difficult times. It didn't get burned like Farsari's, but a sister-in-law, thinking it was rubbish, sold them to a rag and bone man for a ridiculous price. Luckily, the publishers Labor got them back and paid the man twice what he had given. Today, there are 40,000 of these negatives in the Catalonia Photographic Institute.

He also visited the Basque Country on many occasions, mostly photographing the towns and villages on our coast. It should not be forgotten that it was commercial work with tourism in mind.
We too owe Roisin a lot for being able to know about that period's architecture, countryside, clothing and customs. His sepia postcards are still for sale in shops today, you won't find it at all hard to come across the signature L. Roisin.
In 1940 he fell ill, left the business in his nephews' hands, and went back to France. He died two years later at Marseilles.