Sounds weird, but I for one have never seen pictures of Japanese anything dating as far back as 1850. That's just 11 years after photography was invented! So if any of you are near Notre Dame and not interested in football, you should go see this exhibit, "Rarely Seen: Selections From the O'Grady Collection of 19th Century Pictures of Asian Women."

According to the linked-to story, producing glass negatives in Asia was really common (surprise surprise - it was cheaper), so there were lots of photography studios, and then of course, lots of photographers, and then lots of models.

I smell a great book proposal in all this...