Book Review: The Arab Imago: A Social History of Portrait Photography 1860–1910, by Stephen Sheehi, The Art Bulletin, 98:4 (2016): 531-534. (original) (raw)
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A Career of Japan: Baron Raimund von Stillfried and Early Yokohama Photography, by Luke Gartlan
This book makes a fundamental contribution to the history of photography in Japan that is unlikely to be superseded. Given the situation of photography not only as a new form of visual discourse from the mid-nineteenth century but also as a social circuit that operated between visual arts and new national and international classes of mediators, it is directly relevant to all research on Meiji-period Japanese art and to considering the modernisation of Asian art. Because this book's subject, the Austrian photographer Baron Raimund von Stillfried (1839-1911), was both an aristocrat educated in the service of the Austro-Hungarian Army and a German-speaking observer and commentator on many aspects of life in Japan in the 1870s, it forms a valuable counterweight to studies that have hitherto been largely centred on sources in English and French. The book marks a tremendous effort in transcultural research, which required Gartlan to master both German and Japanese, learn the material properties of 1870s photographs, understand and explicate their multi-sided cultural and historical placement-including working through a staggering variety of public and private archives and collection records on three continents, not to mention scholarly literature in German and Japanese-as well as intellectually grasp some vexing issues of cultural transfer first in an era of colonial domination and later of post-colonial reinterpretation. That all these goals have been realised and made available to general readers in fluent prose is ample testament to the book's achievement and importance. One of Gartlan's main objectives is to counter a perceived lack of art-historical research about Yokohama photographs due to their production as souvenirs for local residents and diplomats. Later, after 1869, with the opening of the Suez Canal and the American continental railroad, Yokohama photographs appealed to globetrotting tourists. In response to this increased demand, Stillfried altered some of his negatives-and the composition of the resulting prints-to naturalise views by removing identificatory numbers and titles or descriptions that were printed on the verso (see Figures 37 and 38 and discussions on pages 35, 67 and 71). While Yokohama photography became a huge source of images of nineteenth-century Japan for Europe and had a definite impact on late nineteenth century art-such as Jugendstil in Vienna-it is also awkwardly placed for the view of later art history, particularly 'post-colonialist' art history after the work of Edward Said. This
2015
A Career of Japan is the first study of one of the major photographers and personalities of nineteenth-century Japan. Baron Raimund von Stillfried was the most important foreign-born photographer of the Meiji era and one of the first globally active photographers of his generation. He played a key role in the international image of Japan and the adoption of photography within Japanese society itself. Yet, the lack of a thorough study of his activities, travels, and work has been a fundamental gap in both Japanese- and Western-language scholarship. Based on extensive new primary sources and unpublished documents from archives around the world, this book examines von Stillfried’s significance as a cultural mediator between Japan and Central Europe. It highlights the tensions and fierce competition that underpinned the globalising photographic industry at a site of cultural contact and exchange – treaty-port Yokohama. In the process, it raises key questions for Japanese visual culture, Habsburg studies, and cross-cultural histories of photography and globalisation.