宮内里喜子（群馬）

About this photo

She holds white flowers at her chest. Her kimono has bold stripes, and the collar of the kimono layered underneath has a fine pattern like a lattice. The name under the photo reads "Miyauchi Rikiko (Gunma)." One of the photos in Nihon Bijincho (Album of Japanese Beauties), published in 1908 (Meiji 41).

The photo is framed in an oval, and the area around it is left white. This kind of finish, where the edge of a photo is shaped into an oval or other form or softly faded out, is called a vignette. The word is French for "little vine," and it originally meant a decoration of grape leaves and tendrils on the pages of books. In photographs the oval kind was the most common, and it was often made in the darkroom with a mask to block the light.

Photo apps on smartphones still have a "vignette" effect that darkens or lightens the corners of a photo to make the person or object in the middle stand out. The reading of the name is our best guess.

Glossary