Masters of Photography - Felice Beato

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felice_B...

Felice Beato (born 1833 or 1834, died c. 1907), sometimes known as Felix Beato, was a Corfiote photographer. 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.

The origins and identity of Felice Beato have been problematic issues, but the confusion over his birth date and birthplace seems now to have been substantially cleared up. Based on an application for a travel permit that he made in 1858, Beato was born in 1833 or 1834 on the island of Corfu. At the time of his birth, Corfu was part of the British protectorate of the Ionian Islands, and so Beato would have qualified as a British subject.Corfu had previously been a Venetian possession, and this fact goes some way to explaining the many references to Beato as "Italian" and "Venetian" member of the Corfiot Italians.The Beato family is recorded as having moved to Corfu in the 17th century and was one of the noble Venetian families that ruled the island during the Republic of Venice

Because of the existence of a number of photographs signed "Felice Antonio Beato" and "Felice A. Beato", it was long assumed that there was one photographer who somehow managed to photograph at the same time in places as distant as Egypt and Japan. But in 1983 it was shown by Chantal Edel that "Felice Antonio Beato" represented two brothers, Felice Beato and Antonio Beato, who sometimes worked together, sharing a signature. The confusion arising from the signatures continues to cause problems in identifying which of the two photographers was the creator of a given image.

In 1853 James Robertson and Beato began photographing together and they formed a partnership called "Robertson & Beato 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. In 1855 Beato and Robertson travelled to Balaklava, Crimea where they took over reportage of the Crimean War following Roger Fenton's departure.

In February 1858 Felice Beato arrived in Calcutta and began travelling throughout Northern India to document the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

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. 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. 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.

Like other 19th century commercial photographers, Beato often made copy prints of his original photographs. It was an effective and economical way to duplicate images.

Beato pioneered and refined the techniques of hand-colouring photographs.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.

http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.02...
http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.02...
http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.02...
http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.02...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi...
http://www.nationalgalleries.org/coll...
http://reportajegrafico.wordpress.com...
http://www.felice-beato-old-japan.com/
http://www.old-japan.co.uk/article_ko...
http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue5...
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/a...
http://www.luminous-lint.com/app/phot...
http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/toyobunko/La-158...
http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/toyobunko/La-158...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/...
http://www.kingsownmuseum.plus.com/ga...
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cat...
http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/e...
http://www.getty.edu/news/press/cente...

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Felice
• Beato
• James
• Robertson
• Crimean
• War
• Second
• Opium
• Indian
• Rebellion
• Munity
• Japan
• Cybelephotography

[ml2001]

扣人心弦

[nubrini]

great

[dearmalika]

Amazing!

[roygbiv330]

6:23 the kendo practice is i think the most valuable of all the other pictures. it is like the vacuum package of the kendo birth when it started to be one of sports.

[VEGA747]

Absolutely Beautiful. The Music Timing Perfect. Really Enjoyed it. Thank you.