Baron Raimund von Stillfried
1839–1911 · Austrian military officer and photographer in Japan
Raimund von Stillfried (Komotau, Bohemia, 1839 - Vienna, 1911) was an Austrian military officer who became one of the first professional photographers in Japan. His work, mostly made in the 1870s after the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, is valued for its documentary and artistic qualities and is held in archives in several countries. Although he trained at the Imperial Naval Academy, where he also studied painting, he is today remembered chiefly as a photographer.
After leaving the military he travelled through South America and China before reaching Yokohama in 1864. Following a period in Mexico and Austria, he returned to Japan in 1868 and worked as an assistant to the Prussian consul until 1870, though he preferred to concentrate on importing photographic materials and on photography itself, with help from Felice Beato. In 1871 he opened a studio in Yokohama, which changed name several times and became a partnership with Hermann Andersen in 1875.
His output includes portraits, carefully staged genre scenes and landscapes, images in high demand among foreign residents and visitors. For the Vienna World Exhibition of 1873, the Japanese government commissioned him to document the country's modernisation and the Ainu people of Hokkaido. He also taught several Japanese photographers, and his protégé Kusakabe Kimbei acquired much of his business shares in 1876. He left Japan in 1881 and settled in Vienna, where he was appointed purveyor of photography to the Imperial and Royal Court.
His photographs are preserved today in institutions such as the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Musée Guimet, and remain an important source for the Japan of the Meiji period.