Traditional Chinese characters – the poor, the workers and the representatives of high society.
Austrian Baron was one of the first photographers who went to China and made these portraits of local people during the reign of the last Imperial dynasty, the Qing dynasty.
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Raimund von Stillfried) was born in 1839 in the family of Austrian aristocrats. In his youth he traveled around the world, then opened a photography Studio in Yokohama, Japan. Stillfried specialized in the creation of staged, hand-painted photographs, which capture traditional images of the Japanese. The resulting images were in great demand among the wealthy Western tourists who bought them as Souvenirs. Costumed portraits Stillfried had a significant impact on European knowledge of Japan.
In the mid 1870-ies, the Baron arrived in Shanghai, where he applied the same technique of shooting that in Japan. In his carefully staged portraits of this time embodied the traditional Chinese character types – the poor, the workers and the representatives of high society.
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