Felice A. Beato is a British photographer and is credited as being one of the first Western photographers 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.