Japanese Azaleas comes from the hand-coloured photographic work of Ogawa Kazumasa, a Meiji-era Japanese photographer and publisher who pioneered the collotype printing process in Japan. Best known for his flower photography, including the portfolio Lilies of Japan, Kazumasa used delicate hand-tinting to bring a painterly quality to photographic prints of blossoms and landscapes — a rare bridge between documentary photography and decorative art.

As an archival fine art print, the crisp linework and subtle tonal shifts of the original are preserved with unusual clarity and precision.