Photographer Stanislaw Julian Ignacy Walery was born Stanislaw Julian Ignacy Ostrorog on September 12, 1863, in London, England. Later, Stanislaw would also go by the professional pseudonyms Walery, Laryew, and variations on these names depending on where he was living. He came from a family of Polish nobles, his father being Count Stanislaw Julian Ostrorog who was exiled from Poland after his participation in the November Uprising of 1830. After serving in various armies, the elder Stanislaw finally left military life and emigrated to England in 1862, at which point he married. After Stanislaw's birth in 1863, the family moved to Marseilles, France, where Count Stanislaw opened a photography studio, using the professional name "Walery."

Young Stanislaw was sent to Poland for his schooling while his parents moved throughout Europe as, despite a successful photography career, the Count had to relocate his studio several times due to political and financial upheaval. The Count, having divorced and remarried, finally settled in London in 1880, where the he opened his photography studio on Regent Street. Now eighteen, the younger Stanislaw briefly joined the Royal Artillery at Woolwich before leaving the military to study photography in Paris, inspired by his father's own career in the medium. After two years of schooling, he took a job in Mexico as a railway worker, taking his cameras with him to further his technique. He then traveled to Africa, going to the Province of Natal (now part of the Union of South Africa). After his father's sudden death in 1890, Stanislaw moved back to England, where he took over his father's studio and the name Walery.  

He soon partnered with photographer Alfred Ellis, opening the Ellis & Walery studios on Baker Street. They became known for their portraiture, including images of King George V and performer Dan Leno. Stanislaw also taught himself heliogravure as a means of making extra money reproducing artworks; while this side venture was less successful, it would be instrumental in his own personal output later in his career.

In 1900 Stanislaw opened a second studio in Paris on his own, where he eventually worked under the name "Laryew" -- an anagram of Walery meant to distinguish his work from his father's as well as that of Walery Ostroga, another Polish photographer of note at the time, and of the work of Charles Auguste Varsavaux "dit Walery," a French erotic photographer hoping to use the Walery name to further his own career. In this studio Stanislaw focused on theater and cabaret artists, including Josephine Baker, Oscar Wilde, François Féral Benga, Mata Hari, and Maurice Chevalier. By the 1920s he was successful enough to give up his half of the London business, and he began focusing on art photography, became known for his artful images of the nude female figure. He published a portfolio of 100 heliogravures of nude female dancers in various poses that echoed Art Deco stylization, titled Nus - Cent Photographies Originales, which, due to the confusion surrounding his name, did not earn the acclaim it would ultimately receive many decades after his death. 

Stanislaw Julian Ignacy Walery continued to have a successful career until his death on February 22, 1929. His work now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.