Stanisław Julian Ignacy Ostroróg (also known as Walery, Stanislas Waléry, Lucien Waléry, and Laryew, born 12 September 1863 – 24 February 1929) was a Polish photographer active in London and Paris between 1890 and 1929. After inheriting his father's name and photographic studio in London, he continued with portraiture for about a decade until the turn of the century when he moved definitively to Paris. There he achieved celebrity as an innovator and accomplished photographer of cabaret stars and of the female form. Background He was born on 12 September 1863 in London into a family of political emigrants of Polish noble descent. He was the eldest child of Count Stanisław Julian Ostroróg, a British subject and his Polish wife, Teodozja Waleria, née Gwozdecka. His father was born in the Russian Partition of what had once been the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, not long after the November uprising of 1830 which led to severe repression of the insurgents, of which the family had been part. While Ostroróg senior served as an officer in the Imperial Guard in the Crimean War, he came into contact with a British General and decided to switch sides, but after a failed attempt to join the British forces, apparently on health grounds, he was directed to the Polish cavalry division of the Ottoman Army, headed by General Zamoyski, whose adjutant he became in the rank of colonel. After the war he settled in London and was granted citizenship in 1862 and married. After the birth of Stanisław junior, the family headed to Marseille to set up a photographic studio. In 1866 the family were back in Warsaw, but the following year after the death of the second son, they left for Paris in time for the birth of the third son, Leon, and where Ostroróg senior resumed his successful photographic career until 1878 when his creditor's financial difficulties forced him to give up trading and the family moved back to London in 1880. He opened a Regent Street studio where Stanisław junior was eventually to join his father. Early years Although born in England, Stanisław junior was sent to Poland, presumably to relatives, to learn Polish while his parents returned to France where his father developed his photographic career. In 1871, during the Paris Commune, he was sent there for his schooling. In that period, his parents divorced and his father remarried. At around 18 years of