In 1860 Beato accompanied French and British troops on the definitive campaign of the Second Opium War.
Partial gift from the Wilson Centre for Photography Treasury Street, Canton, Felice Beato, negative, April 1860 print by Henry Hering, 1862. He traveled widely in the northern part of the country and expanded his oeuvre with architectural views of Agra, Benares (present-day Varanasi), and Muritsur (present-day Amritsar).
He arranged disinterred bones in the foreground in order to dramatically depict the massive slaughter that occurred at Lucknow.īased in Calcutta, Beato spent more than two years in India. In some views, such as the one shown here, he added rebel corpses to increase the dramatic effect. Guided by military officers, he made images of the mutiny's main sites-Delhi, Cawnpore, and Lucknow-that he sequenced and captioned to re-create the primary events. The rebellion and its brutal suppression by British troops were widely covered by the press.Įager to take advantage of Western interest in the conflict, Beato arrived in India in February 1858 to record the rebellion's aftermath. In 1857 the Indian Mutiny, or First War of Independence, challenged British dominance on the subcontinent for the first time. Interior of the Secundrabagh after the Slaughter of 2,000 Rebels, Lucknow, Felice Beato, 1858. Such relationships would serve him well throughout his life, particularly in covering military campaigns in India, China, and Burma (present-day Myanmar). He insinuated himself into the world of the officers' mess and assiduously cultivated his connections with those men. There he learned to make photographs in extreme and unpredictable conditions. In 1856 he assisted Robertson in covering the final days of the Crimean War, a three-year conflict in which Britain and France joined the Ottoman sultan to oppose Russian strategic interests in the region.īeato's experience in the Crimea was decisive for his career. In Constantinople Robertson and Beato focused on architecture, such as the mosque of Sultan Ahmed built in the 1600s, a masterpiece of the Islamic period.įrom Robertson, Beato learned the albumen glass-plate negative process, noteworthy for the sharpness of its images. Superintendent of the Imperial Mint, Robertson opened one of the first commercial photography studios in the capital between 18. Sultan Ahmed's Mosque, Felice Beato, 1855–57īeato's involvement with photography likely began in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) through his collaboration with James Robertson (1813–88), who became his brother-in-law in 1855.
His photographs of battlefields, the first to show images of the dead, provided a new direction for that genre.Ĭatering to a Western audience, Beato produced an exceptionally diverse oeuvre: topographical and architectural views, including panoramas, as well as portraits and costume studies of the countries he visited or in which he resided.įrom Beato's series on domestic Japanese society, the full-length portrait shown here depicts the traditional armored costume of the samurai, the soldier of noble class who served the powerful rulers of Japan. Following in the wake of Britain's vast colonial empire, he was among the primary photographers to provide images of newly opened countries such as India, China, Japan, Korea, and Burma.Ī pioneer war photographer, Beato recorded several conflicts: the Crimean War in 1855–56, the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny in 1858–59, the Second Opium War in 1860, and the American expedition to Korea in 1871. In a peripatetic career that spanned five decades, the photographer Felice Beato (1832–1909) covered a wide swath of East Asia. Koboto Santaro, Felice Beato, negative, 1863 print, 1868.