Replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, California, ca. 1937
Vintage gelatin silver bromide print
13 x 8 1/2 inches
Exhibition label on verso
September 19, 2022
K. Furukawa was a member of The Japanese Camera Club of San Francisco, and served as the group’s treasurer from 1937-1938, exhibiting actively until the outbreak of WWII. This rare vintage bromide print depicts a recreation of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse for which William Shakespeare wrote plays like Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. Furukawa captures the building in soft and slanting light, finding a poetic conversation between the cast shadows of the open windows and the building's timber framing.
The original Globe, an open-air amphitheater located in London on the southbank of the River Thames, burned to the ground during a performance of Henry VIII in 1613. Thus began a long history of the building's reconstruction, from Texas to Tokyo, to host contemporary performances of Shakespeare’s plays. This photograph appears to show a version known as the Old Globe Theatre, which was built in San Diego’s Balboa Park in 1935. As the Bard famously wrote: "All the world’s a stage”.
