Mapping Isabella Bird: Geolocation & Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880)

Original Source: Baron Raimund von Stillfried, [Ainu Men], c. 1874-1876. Hand-colored albumen photograph.

This illustration of the man on the left is based off of an Ainu man depicted in a photograph attributed to Baron Raimund von Stillfried, c. 1874-1882. Stillfried was an Austrian photographer living and working in Japan. While the left man is consistent in both the photograph and the illustration, the man on the right was switched out for a different figure. The illustration also served as a reference image for a smaller version that appears in-text in Unbeaten Tracks in Japan.
The example above is a hand-colored albumen photograph located in Museum Volkenkunde. The museum identifies Wilhelm Joest as the photographer, but other scholars of photography have consistently attributed the photograph to Stillfried.

Discussed in the following chapter: Spiker, Christina M. “‘Civilized’ Men and ‘Superstitious’ Women: Visualizing the Hokkaido Ainu in Isabella Bird’s Unbeaten Tracks, 1880.” In Gender, Continuity, and the Shaping of Modernity in the Arts of East Asia, 16th­­–20th Centuries, edited by Lara Blanchard and Kristen Chiem, 287-315. Leiden: Brill, 2017.

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