FRONT MAN

In the annals of early photography, Felice Beato stands alongside such pioneers as Mathew Brady, Roger Fenton, Alexander Gardner, and James Robertson. In a career that spanned the last half of the 19th century, Beato traveled to the Mediterranean, Asia, and Africa in search of the unusual and the picturesque. But in the iconography of war, his photojournalism was groundbreaking—and at times disturbing.

Born in Venice, Beato spent only two years there before his family moved to the Greek island of Corfu, and then to Constantinople. In his 20s he began a close association with the Scottish photographer James Robertson, who had a studio in Constantinople and had married Beato’s sister in 1855. The two men formed Robertson, Beato and Co. and soon were commissioned by P. & D. Colnaghi & Company, a London print company, to replace Roger Fenton as its photographer in the Crimean War.

Felice Beato realized the potential of photographic “art” to depict war.

Though there is no conclusive evidence of Beato’s presence in Crimea in 1855, he probably accompanied his brother-in-law to cover the final months of the war and then helped him develop his panoramic images of various battlefields and of the destruction wrought by the Franco-British bombardment of Sevastopol. In 1856 Beato returned to Crimea alone, and his coverage included several