High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Adolfo Farsari (11 February 1841 – 7 February 1898) was an Italian photographer based in Yokohama, Japan. Following a brief military career, including service in the American Civil War, he became a successful entrepreneur and commercial photographer. His photographic work was highly regarded, particularly his hand-coloured portraits and landscapes, which he sold mostly to foreign residents and visitors to the country. Farsari`s images were widely distributed, presented or mentioned in books and periodicals, and sometimes recreated by artists in other media; they shaped foreign perceptions of the people and places of Japan and to some degree affected how Japanese saw themselves and their country. His studio, the last notable foreign-owned studio in Japan, was one of the country`s largest and most prolific commercial photographic firms. Largely due to Farsari`s exacting technical standards and his entrepreneurial abilities it had a significant influence on the development of photography in Japan.