Held in the Permanent Exhibition Hall

This is the second installment in a series of exhibitions introducing artists with ties to the southern Hokkaido region. This time, the spotlight is on photographer Kino Koike, a native of Hakodate (formerly Esan Town), who creates works using classical photographic techniques such as gelatin silver printing and albumen printing. The exhibition features his photographs of the streets and people of Hakodate, captured using the wet plate collodion process.

Single Ticket

General  ￥260
High school and university students ￥150

Group Ticket - Groups of 10+(pp) 

General ￥210
High school and university students ￥110

Free of charge

Persons 65 years old and over
Elementary and junior high school students and their escort
High school students who use the museum every Saturday.
Those who use the service on “Doumin no Hi (July 17)

Kino Koike

Born in 1980 in Hakodate, Hokkaido (formerly Esan Town).
Graduated from Hakodate La Salle High School in 1999 and completed his master's degree at the Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University, in 2005.
Koike is based in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hakodate, where he primarily creates and exhibits photographic works.

Focusing on the physical and documentary nature of photographic media, he explores history and memory—of places and people—through material expression.
His projects often employ analog techniques such as gelatin silver printing, albumen printing, and wet plate photography.

Recent notable works include Домой – Trans-Siberian Railway (gelatin silver print), Hama-sa (albumen print), and Light and Presence (wet plate collodion, ambrotype).
He was selected as a finalist for KYOTOGRAPHIE Kyoto International Photography Festival KG+SELECT in 2023.

Web　https://kinokoike.jp/
Instagram/X　@51foto

What is Wet Plate Photography?

Wet plate photography, known for being the technique used to photograph historical figures such as Toshizō Hijikata and Ryōma Sakamoto, was invented in 1851 by British photographer Frederick Scott Archer. The process involves coating a glass plate with a light-sensitive solution, exposing it while still wet, and developing and fixing the image immediately afterward.

Due to its low sensitivity to light, the method requires long exposure times—ranging from several seconds to a few minutes—necessitating that subjects remain completely still during the shoot. The resulting silver image on the glass appears as a negative when viewed through light but can be seen as a positive image when placed against a dark background, such as black cloth. This technique is known as "ambrotype", and it was widely used in Japan from the late Edo period through the Meiji era.

Wet plate photography was introduced to Japan in the late Edo period. In Hakodate, following the port’s opening in 1859, the first Russian consul, Joseph Goshkevich, and Russian physician Iosif Zalevsky are believed to have passed on the technique to Japanese pioneers such as Matsusaburō Yokoyama, Kōkichi Kizu, and Kenzō Tamoto. From the early 1860s, Tamoto and others used the wet plate process to document the streets and people of Hakodate, creating invaluable records of the region’s history.