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Between the twilight years of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1867) and the end of the Meiji Era (1868–1912) that followed it, photography offered a unique insight into the rapid transformation of Japan from an isolated, feudal society to a modern, industrialised state. 
Sebastian Dobson, author of Japan on a Glass Plate, tells us more about the selection of photographs included in his book. 

The artist José Vermeersch (1922–1997) has built two wood-fired kilns himself, in order to fire his heterogeneous ceramic sculptures: first in Reninge in 1979 amid the fields, and six years later in his own back yard in Lendelede. In a unique selection of archival images, many of which unpublished, we see the artist at work on both locations: the photographs testify to the patience and care with which Vermeersch created his sculptures. 

Shin Hanga means ‘new prints’ and depicts harmoniously balanced designs, printed with woodblocks on high quality paper using the brightest and finest pigments and published in small editions. Our latest publication sets out to explore this early 20th-century Japanese art movement, which integrated Western elements with the old values of traditional woodblock prints. In the book you’ll find a unique selection from two Dutch private collections, the Royal Museum of Arts and History in Brussels and several exceptional items from the family collection of the publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō, the most important publisher of Japanese prints of the 20th century.

In recent years, there has been a striking increase in the attention paid to the late and final works of renowned painters. Just think of the recent exhibitions devoted to the late Raphael, Tintoretto, Goya, Turner, Manet, Gauguin and others. This new interest often leads to surprising discoveries and a revaluation of their late oeuvre.

During WWII, many German soldiers were armed with Leica and Rolleiflex cameras. Some of them were even officially commissioned as photographers, while others were asked by their commanders to snap records of events. Celebrated author and art historian Ian Jeffrey has spent more than 3 years thrawling through these photo albums to write the book All At War. He tells all about it in this interview.