Felice A. Beato
Felice A. Beato is a British photographer and is credited as
being the first Western photographer to take pictures in China.
Beato's primary focus was photographing Asia and the Near East. Between the years of
1862-1877, he lived and worked in Yokohama, Japan photographing hundreds of Japanese
going through their everyday schedules. In the 1850s, Beato worked alongside his
brother-in-law, James Robertson. Together, they photographed the
Fall of Sebastopol in
the Crimean War of 1855 and the
Indian Mutiny in 1857-58. Beato also photographed the Opium War in China in 1860 and the Sudenese
colonial wars of 1885. He is most known for his war photographs and supposedly took the
first images showing human corpses on a battlefield.
Beato was the first photographer to fully document a military campaigne in motion. He accompanied a British and French
expeditionary force as they attempted to open China to the Western trade. His images document everything from military positions
to the aftermath and destruction of the battle. They were sent back to Britain and shown to the public to justify the Opium Wars
in addition to shaping public opinion of the cultures that existed in the East.
At the end of his life, he resided in Burma and started a furniture business until his
death in 1906.
Famous Photographs
- Thr Pei-t'ang Fort, 1860.
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