by Gerald Boerner
“Beato was the first war photographer; he had travelled extensively and his work was held in very high regard.”
— Terry Bennett in Korea: Caught in Time
“Felice Beato devoted his photography career to portraying Asian subjects, primarily in Japan, India, Athens, Constantinople, the Crimea, and Palestine.”
— World Wide Arts Resources
Bonus: Photographer’s Thought for the Day…
“Early travel and war photographer active from 1853 onwards in the Mediterranean and the Crimea sometimes in partnership with James Robertson. He traveled widely and photographed the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny, in Second Opium War in China, Japan and in the Sudan.”
— Luminous Lint
Felice Beato (1833 or 1834 – 1907)
Felice Beato sometimes known as Felix Beato, was a Corfiote photographer. He was one of the first photographers to take pictures in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. He is noted for his genre works, portraits, and views and panoramas of the architecture and landscapes of Asia and the Mediterranean region. Beato’s travels to many lands gave him the opportunity to create powerful and lasting images of countries, people and events that were unfamiliar and remote to most people in Europe and North America. To this day his work provides the key images of such events as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Second Opium War. His photographs represent the first substantial oeuvre of what came to be called photojournalism. He had a significant impact on other photographers, and Beato’s influence in Japan, where he worked with and taught numerous other photographers and artists, was particularly deep and lasting.
Mediterranean, the Crimea and India…
Little is certain about Felice Beato’s early development as a photographer, though it is said that he bought his first and only lens in Paris in 1851. He probably met British photographer James Robertson in Malta in 1850 and accompanied him to Constantinople in 1851. Robertson had been an engraver at the Imperial Ottoman Mint since 1843 and had probably taken up photography in the 1840s. In 1853 the two began photographing together and they formed a partnership called "Robertson & Beato" either in that year or in 1854 when Robertson opened a photographic studio in Pera, Constantinople. Robertson and Beato were joined by Beato’s brother Antonio on photographic expeditions to Malta in 1854 or 1856 and to Greece and Jerusalem in 1857. A number of the firm’s photographs produced in the 1850s are signed "Robertson, Beato and Co." and it is believed that the "and Co." refers to Antonio.
China…
In 1860 Felice Beato left the partnership of "Robertson & Beato", though Robertson retained use of the name until 1867. Beato was sent from India to photograph the Anglo-French military expedition to China in the Second Opium War. He arrived in Hong Kong in March and immediately began photographing the city and its surroundings as far as Canton. Beato’s photographs are some of the earliest taken in China.
While in Hong Kong, Beato met Charles Wirgman, an artist and correspondent for the Illustrated London News. The two accompanied the Anglo-French forces travelling north to Talien Bay, then to Pehtang and the Taku Forts at the mouth of the Peiho, and on to Peking and the suburban Summer Palace, Qingyi Yuan. Wirgman’s (and others’) illustrations for the Illustrated London News are often derived from Beato’s photographs of the places on this route.
Second Opium War… 
Beato’s photographs of the Second Opium War are the first to document a military campaign as it unfolded, doing so through a sequence of dated and related images. His photographs of the Taku Forts represent this approach on a reduced scale, forming a narrative recreation of a battle. The sequence of images shows the approach to the forts, the effects of bombardments on the exterior walls and fortifications and finally the devastation within the forts, including the bodies of dead Chinese soldiers. Interestingly, the photographs were not taken in this order, as the photographs of dead Chinese had to be taken first before the bodies were removed; only then was Beato free to take the other views of the exterior and interior of the forts. In albums of the time these photographs are placed in such a way as to recreate the sequence of the battle.
Summer Palace… 
Just outside Peking, Beato took photographs at the Summer Palace, Qingyi Yuan (Garden of Clear Ripples), a private estate of the Chinese emperor comprising palace pavilions, temples, a large artificial lake and gardens. Some of these photographs, taken between 6 and 18 October 1860, are haunting, unique images of buildings that were plundered and looted by the Anglo-French forces beginning on the 6 October, and then, on the 18 and 19 October, set to the torch by the British First Division on the orders of Lord Elgin as a reprisal against the emperor for the torture and deaths of twenty members of an Allied diplomatic party. Among the last photographs that Beato took in China at this time were portraits of Lord Elgin, arrived in Peking to sign the Convention of Peking, and Prince Kung, who signed on behalf of the Xianfeng Emperor.
Japan
Samurai of the Satsuma clan, during the Boshin War period (1868–1869)
By 1863 Beato had moved to Yokohama, Japan, joining Charles Wirgman who had been there since 1861. The two formed and maintained a partnership called “Beato & Wirgman, Artists and Photographers” during the years 1864–1867. Wirgman again produced illustrations derived from Beato’s photographs while Beato photographed some of Wirgman’s sketches and other works. Beato’s Japanese photographs include portraits, genre works, landscapes, cityscapes and a series of photographs documenting the scenery and sites along the Tōkaidō, the latter series recalling the ukiyo-e of Hiroshige and Hokusai. This was a significant time to be photographing in Japan since foreign access to (and within) the country was greatly restricted by the Shogunate. Beato’s images are remarkable not only for their quality, but for their rarity as photographic views of Edo period Japan.
Beato was very active while in Japan. In September 1864 he was an official photographer on the military expedition to Shimonoseki. The following year he produced a number of dated views of Nagasaki and its surroundings. From 1866 he was often (gently) caricatured in Japan Punch, which was founded and edited by Wirgman. In an October 1866 fire that destroyed much of Yokohama, Beato lost his studio and negatives, and he spent the next two years working vigorously to produce replacement material. The result was two volumes of photographs, ‘Native Types’, containing 100 portraits and genre works, and ‘Views of Japan’, containing 98 landscapes and cityscapes.
Many of the photographs were hand-coloured, a technique that in Beato’s studio successfully applied the refined skills of Japanese watercolourists and woodblock printmakers to European photography. From 1869 to 1877 Beato, no longer partnered with Wirgman, ran his own studio in Yokohama called “F. Beato & Co., Photographers” with an assistant named H. Woolett and four Japanese photographers and four Japanese artists. Kusakabe Kimbei was probably one of Beato’s artist-assistants before becoming a photographer in his own right. Beato photographed with Ueno Hikoma and others, and possibly taught photography to Raimund von Stillfried.
Felice Beato with Saigo Tsugumichi (both seated in front), with foreign friends. Photograph by Hugues Krafft in 1882.
In 1871 Beato served as official photographer with the United States naval expedition of Admiral Rodgers to Korea. The views Beato took on this expedition are the earliest confirmed photographs of the country and its inhabitants.
Beato and photography…
Photographs of the 19th century often now shows the limitations of the technology used, yet Felice Beato managed to successfully work within and even transcend those limitations. He predominantly produced albumen silver prints from wet collodion glass-plate negatives. Beyond aesthetic considerations, the long exposure times needed by this process must have been a further stimulus to Beato to frame and position the subjects of his photographs carefully. Apart from his portrait-making, he often posed local people in such a way as to set off the architectural or topographical subjects of his images, but otherwise people (and other moving objects) are sometimes rendered a blur or disappear altogether during the long exposures. Such blurs are a common feature of 19th century photographs.
“The nineteenth-century photographer Felice Beato was a direct predecessor of the modern photojournalist. Born in Venice (he subsequently assumed British citizenship), he began recording landscapes and archaeological remains in Greece and the Middle East, but went on to become one of the first photographers to specialize in war reporting, documenting the Crimean War, the aftermath of the Indian …”
— Encyclopedia.com
Like other 19th century commercial photographers, Beato often made copy prints of his original photographs. The original would have been pinned to a stationary surface and then photographed, producing a second negative from which to make more prints. The pins used to hold the original in place are sometimes visible in copy prints. In spite of the limitations of this method, including the loss of detail and degradation of other picture elements, it was an effective and economical way to duplicate images.
Beato pioneered and refined the techniques of hand-colouring photographs and making panoramas. He may have started hand-colouring photographs at the suggestion of Wirgman or he may have seen the hand-coloured photographs made by partners Charles Parker and William Parke Andrew. Whatever the inspiration, Beato’s coloured landscapes are delicate and naturalistic and his coloured portraits, though more strongly coloured than the landscapes, are also excellent. As well as providing views in colour, Beato worked to represent very large subjects in a way that gave a sense of their vastness. Throughout his career, Beato’s work is marked by spectacular panoramas, which he produced by carefully making several contiguous exposures of a scene and then joining the resulting prints together, thereby re-creating the expansive view. The complete version of his panorama of Pehtang comprises nine photographs joined together almost seamlessly for a total length of more than 2.5 metres (8 ft).
[Biographical information is from the Wikipedia article on Felice Beato that can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felice_Beato ]
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