Stillfried & Andersen

The firm of Stillfried & Andersen, also known as the Japan Photographic Association, was a photographic studio founded by Baron Raimund von Stillfried and Hermann Andersen that operated in Yokohama, Japan between 1876 and 1885.^[1][2] The studio is noted for its portraits^[3] and landscapes^[4] that were often hand-coloured and presented in bound albums. The firm also produced photographic prints from negatives by Felice Beato.

A hand-coloured print by Stillfried & Andersen, between 1862 and 1885

History

After at least two visits to Japan in the early to mid-1860s, Austrian photographer and nobleman Baron Raimund von Stillfried became a resident of Yokohama in 1868, where it is believed he learned photography from Felice Beato.^[3] In 1871, he established his own photographic studio, called Stillfried & Co..^[2] In 1875, Hermann Andersen was listed as an employee of Stillfried & Co. but by 1876, Andersen had formed a partnership with Stillfried and so the firm was renamed Stillfried & Andersen.^[5] Another incarnation of the firm was the Japan Photographic Association, under which name it was listed in 1875.^[6] Until 1885 the firm operated under both names interchangeably.

In 1877, Stillfried & Andersen purchased the studio and stock of Felice Beato^[7][8] and in the same year or shortly thereafter published Views and Costumes of Japan, which included photographs by Beato and Stillfried, as well as reprints of some of Beato's works.^[4]

The partnership between Stillfried and Andersen was legally dissolved in 1878, though Andersen continued to run the studio under the same name of Stillfried & Andersen. In the subsequent years a number of legal battles and other entanglements ensued between the two, also involving Stillfried's brother, Franz von Stillfried. Around 1885, Kusakabe Kimbei obtained a quantity of Stillfried's original negatives,^[9] which Kusakabe included in some of his albums in the late 1880s and the 1890s. The firm of Stillfried & Andersen was finally bought by Adolfo Farsari in 1885,^[1] by which point neither Stillfried nor Andersen was resident in Japan. Farsari held the bulk of the firm's negatives,^[1] only for them to be destroyed in a fire in 1886 along with all of Adolfo Farsari's own stock.^[4]

Collections

Stillfried & Andersen photographs can be found in:

• the Royal Collection Trust,^[10] United Kingdom
• the Canadian Centre for Architecture,^[11] Montreal
• the Museé Guimet, Paris.^[12]