During the 1870s, Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Ratenicz (1839–1911) was the leading foreign photographer in Yokohama, a primary port for trade and tourism. The aristocrat Stillfried was born in Komotau, Austro-Hungary (today Chomutov, in the Czech Republic) and, like his father, embarked on a military career. While studying at the Imperial Marine Academy in Trieste, and then the Imperial Military Engineering School in Tulln, Austria, he began to pursue painting. Although his military career with the Austro-Hungarian Empire was short-lived, lasting only from 1859 to 1863, the lure of the seas and far-flung places inspired by his naval education and his Orientalist painting teachers led him to South America, China, and then Japan, which he reached in 1864.
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Once Stillfried arrived in Japan, he rejected the expectations of his aristocratic background and quickly demonstrated his characteristic resiliency. First, he worked for a Dutch silk merchant in Nagasaki, and the following year he obtained a position at the French consulate in Hakodate. Still restless, he went on an ill-fated tour with the Mexican military in support of Maximilian I, the Austrian who became emperor of Mexico from 1864 until his assassination in 1867. Unable to find a suitable commission with the Austrian government, Stillfried returned to Japan in 1868 and found a position as secretary to the Prussian delegation in Tokyo. Then, in a dramatic career change, Stillfried opened his own photographic studio in Yokohama in 1871. Over the following decade, he became a successful commercial photographer catering to foreign residents and travellers. Stillfried’s photographs of Japan, many of which are hand coloured, are some of the most sophisticated and artful from this period. He left the country permanently in 1881 and returned to Vienna, where he died in 1911.
Text source: Eleanor Hight, Trans Asia Photography
