The Yokohama Project grew from two discoveries in Giada Ripa’s family home in Piedmont: an album of 53 hand-coloured photographs by Felice Beato, followed by an unpublished manuscript by her relative Mathilde Ruinart. Both belonged to the history of nineteenth-century encounters with Japan. Ruinart travelled there in 1867 with her diplomat husband, and her friendship with Beato helps explain how his album reached the Italian family.
Ripa follows these historical connections through contemporary photography. Working with a large-format analogue camera, she retraced routes and viewpoints around Yokohama to consider what has survived and what has changed. A second chapter presents studio portraits made in Tokyo, including fishmongers, geishas, fashion designers, writers, wrestlers, priests and artists. These portraits establish a dialogue with the social types represented in Beato’s photographs.
The book brings Ripa’s images together with reproductions of the historical material, including rice-paper reproductions of Beato’s work. Its two chapters connect archival investigation, landscape and portraiture without treating the nineteenth-century view as a neutral account of Japan. The family archive becomes a starting point for examining how photographs shape perceptions across cultures and generations.
Published by GOST Books in September 2026, the clothbound hardback contains 160 pages, four fold-outs and 90 images. The photographic credits include both Giada Ripa and Felice Beato, with Mathilde Ruinart’s writing forming part of the historical context.
