Felice Beato

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Note liminaire : Certaines légendes des photographies de Felice Beato présentées ci-dessous sont précédées du pictogramme , signifiant "avertissement". Il a pour but de prévenir le lecteur du caractère potentiellement marquant de certains clichés qui pourraient éventuellement heurter sa sensibilité.
Felice Beato (photographie réalisée au cours des années 1860. L'identité de l'auteur est inconnue).
Felice Beato (photographie réalisée au cours des années 1860. L'identité de l'auteur est inconnue).

Felice Beato, photographe italien et britannique, est né à Venise vers 1825, naturalisé anglais en 1850 et mort vers 1907 (ses dates de naissance et de mort ne sont pas connues avec précision : pour plus de détails, lire ceci).

Il est un des premiers photographes a réaliser des clichés de l'Est asiatique et un des premiers photographes de guerre. Il est aussi réputé pour ses portraits et ses vues panoramiques de l'architecture et des paysages des régions asiatiques et méditerranéennes.

Felice Beato a voyagé dans de nombreux pays au cours de sa vie, et de ce fait, cela lui offrit l'opportunité de créer des images expressives et d'exercer une influence importante en matière de photographie. Le public occidental, d'Europe et d'Amérique du Nord, a été particulièrement fasciné de découvrir des pays, des paysages, des peuples, des événements qui lui étaient alors inconnus. Ainsi, il s'érigea en témoin privilégié de la révolte des Cipayes (Inde, 1857-1858) ou encore de la Seconde guerre de l'opium (guerre opposant le Royaume-Uni, les États-Unis d'Amérique et la France à la dynastie Qing, 1856-1860) et les photographies nées de ces événements constitueront les prémices de ce qui sera appelé plus tard, le photojournalisme.

Il eut une forte influence sur les photographes qui lui ont succédé et particulièrement au Japon, où son œuvre a laissé une trace profonde et pérenne.

Sommaire

[modifier] Origines et identité

Les origines et l'identité de Felice Beato ont posés de nombreux problèmes aux historiens.

[modifier] Une origine incertaine

Bien que photographe britannique (naturalisé en 1850), il est communément admis qu'il est né sur le territoire de Venise, probablement vers 1825. Toutefois, la date de 1834 est parfois également avancée, la naissance n'ayant pas eu lieu cette fois-ci à Venise, mais sur l'île ionienne de Corfou, qui fut une possession vénitienne, puis, par le traité de Paris du 5 novembre 1815, un protectorat britannique qui lui-même sera cédé par le Royaume-Uni à la Grèce en 1864. En effet, l'état civil de cette île fait référence à un certain Felice Beato né en 1834, sans qu'il ne soit établi avec certitude qu'il s'agisse bien du photographe en question.

[modifier] L’identité se cachant derrière la signature "Felice Antonio Beato"

De nombreuses photographies ont été retrouvées, signées des noms "Felice Antonio Beato" ou "Felice A. Beato". Le problème étant qu'en suivant cette simple indication, on devrait s'attendre à ce que ce soit le travail d'une seule et même personne, ce qui en l'occurrence est compromis dans la mesure où l'on estime qu'à la même date, cette signature était apposée sur des photographies prises à des endroits aussi distants que l'Égypte...et le Japon.

Cette incongruité a été résolue en 1983 par Italo Zannier qui a avancé la thèse (Terry Bennett) que "Felice Antonio Beato" pourrait représenter en fait les deux frères Felice Beato et Antonio Beato, qui auraient pu partager la même signature. Il est donc parfois difficile pour une photo donnée de savoir lequel des deux frères était réellement derrière l'objectif.

[modifier] Le bassin méditerranéen, la Crimée et l’Inde

Concernant les premiers pas en photographie de Felice Beato, quelques zones obscures demeurent, mais il est au moins certain qu'il acheta ses premiers objectifs photographiques à paris en 1851. Il rencontra le photographe anglais James Robertson (1813-1888) probablement à Malte en 1850 et l'accompagna à Constantinople (l'actuelle ville d'Istanbul), en Turquie, en 1851. Robertson était graveur à l'Imperial Ottoman Mint depuis 1843 avant de débuter la photographie au cours des années 1840. En 1853, Felice Beato et James Robertson s'associent et forment un partenariat nommé "Robertson & Beato", la même année où Robertson ouvre un studio photographique à Beyoğlu (Pera), dans la banlieue de Constantinople (Istanbul).

James Robertson et Felice Beato ont été rejoints par Antonio, le frère de Felice, sur certaines expéditions photographiques : Malte en 1854 ou 1856 et la Grèce et Jérusalem en 1857. En effet, plusieurs photographies datées des années 1850 sont signées "Robertson, Beato and Co." et on pense que le "and Co." fait référence à Antonio Beato.

Intérieur de "la Résidence" (en anglais : Secundra Bagh) après le massacre de 2 000 rebelles par le 93e régiment d'infanterie écossais de l'armée royale et le 4e régiment du Punjab.
Intérieur de "la Résidence" (en anglais : Secundra Bagh) après le massacre de 2 000 rebelles par le 93e régiment d'infanterie écossais de l'armée royale et le 4e régiment du Punjab.

À la fin de l'année 1854, ou au début de l'année 1855, James Robertson married the Beato brothers' sister, Leonilda Maria Matilda Beato. They had three daughters, Catherine Grace (née en 1856), Edith Marcon Vergence (née en 1859) et Helen Beatruc (née en 1861).

En 1855 Felice Beato et Robertson se rendirent à Balaclava, en Crimée, où ils couvrirent la guerre de Crimée following Roger Fenton's departure. Ils photographièrent la chute de Sébastopol en septembre 1855.

En février 1858 Felice Beato arriva à Calcutta and began travelling throughout Northern India to document the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. During this time he produced possibly the first-ever photographic images of corpses. It is believed that for at least one of his photographs taken at the palace of Secundra Bagh in Lucknow he had the skeletal remains of Indian rebels disinterred or rearranged to heighten the photograph's dramatic impact (see events at Taku Forts, below). He was also in the cities of Delhi, Cawnpore, Meerut, Benares, Amritsar, Âgrâ, Simla et Lahore. Beato fut rejoint en juillet 1858 par son frère, Antonio, who later left India, probably for health reasons, en décembre 1859. Antonio ended up en Égypte en 1860, setting up a photographic studio à Thèbes en 1862.

[modifier] Chine

En 1860, Felice Beato quitte le partenariat "Robertson & Beato" qui cesse de facto, bien que James Robertson ait utilisé cette signature jusqu'en 1867. Beato est envoyé en Inde pour couvrir l'expédition franco-britannique en Chine dans ce qui fut appelé la « seconde guerre de l'opium ». Il arrive à Hong Kong en mars et commence immédiatement à prendre en photo la ville et ses environs, jusqu'à Canton. ces photographies sont parmi les premières qui furent prises en Chine.

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 Pékin 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.

[modifier] Taku Forts

Intérieur du fort Taku immédiatement après la capture, le 21 août 1860.
Intérieur du fort Taku immédiatement après la capture, le 21 août 1860.

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 (Harris 1999).

Beato's images of the Chinese dead - he never photographed British or French dead - and his manner of producing them particularly reveal the ideological aspects of his photojournalisme. Dr. David F. Rennie, a member of the expedition, noted in his campaign memoir, "I walked round the ramparts on the West side. They were thickly strewn with dead - in the North-West angle thirteen were lying in one group around a gun. Signor Beato was there in great excitement, characterising the group as ‘beautiful‘ and begging that it might not be interfered with until perpetuated by his photographic apparatus, which was done a few minutes afterwards..." (quoted in Griffiths). The resultant photographs are a powerful representation of military triumph and British imperialist power, not least for the purchasers of his images: British soldiers, colonial administrators, merchants and tourists. Back in Britain Beato's images were used to justify the Opium (and other colonial) Wars and they shaped public awareness of the cultures that existed in the East.

[modifier] Le palais d'été de Pékin

Tour du Dieu de la Littérature, palais d'été
Tour du Dieu de la Littérature, palais d'été

A 10 km au Nord-Ouest de Pékin. sac du palais d'été...

Just outside of Peking, Beato took photographs at the Summer Palace, Qingyi Yuan (Garden of Clear Ripples), which was a private garden estate of the Chinese emperor. Some of these photographs, taken between 6 and 18 October 1860 are haunting unique images of buildings that were set to the torch by the Anglo-French forces on the 18 and 19 October 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 de Pékin, and Prince Kung, who signed on behalf of the Xianfeng Emperor.

Beato est de retour en Angleterre en novembre 1861, and during that winter il vendit quatre cents de ses photographies d'Inde et de Chine à Henry Hering, à Londres commercial portrait photographer. Hering had them duplicated and then resold them. When they first went on sale single views were offered at 7 shillings, while the complete India series was priced at £54 8s and the complete China series at £37 8s. Knowing that by 1867 the average per capita income in England and Wales had climbed to £32 per year puts the price of Beato's photographs into perspective.

[modifier] Japon

En 1863, Felice Beato se rend à Yokohama au Japon et y rejoint Charles Wirgam qui était déjà sur place depuis 1861. Les deux forment ensemble un partenariat nommé "Beato & Wirgman, Artists and Photographers" (Beato et Wirgman, artistes et photographes), qui durera de 1864 à 1867. Charles Wirgman produit à nouveaux des illustrations dérivées des photographies de Felice Beato, tandis que celui-ci photographie certaines esquisses ou autres travaux de Wirgman. Les photographies de Beato sont axées sur des portraits, des paysages, des vues urbaines et il produit également des séries sur les lieux rencontrés lors de la route du Tokaido, les dernières séries rappelant largement certaines estampes réalisées par Hiroshige ou Hokusai. Il convient de noter que ces photographies ont été réalisées alors même que le shogunat restreignait l'accès de la chine aux étrangers, et elles constituent donc à ce titre un rare témoignage photographique de ce que fut la période Edo au Japon.

Samouraïs du clan Satsuma durant la guerre de Boshin (1868-1869).
Samouraïs du clan Satsuma durant la guerre de Boshin (1868-1869).

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 satirised 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 vigourously 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 probably was one of Beato's artist-assistants before becoming a photographer in his own right. Beato photographed with Uyeno Hikoma and others, and possibly taught photography to Raimund von Stillfried.

In 1871 Beato served as official photographer with the United States naval expedition of Amiral Rodgers to Korea. The views Beato took on this expedition are the earliest confirmed photographs of the country and its inhabitants.

While in Japan, Beato did not confine his activities to photography, but also engaged in a number of business ventures. He owned land and several studios, was a property consultant, had a financial interest in the Grand Hotel of Yokohama and was a dealer in imported carpets and women's bags, among other things. He also appeared in court on several occasions, variously as plaintiff, defendant and witness. On 6 August 1873 Beato was appointed Consul General for Greece in Japan, a fact that possibly supports the case for his origins being in Corfu.

In 1877, Beato sold most of his stock to the firm, Stillfried & Andersen, who then moved into his studio. In turn, Stillfried & Andersen sold the stock to Adolfo Farsari in 1885. Following the sale to Stillfried & Andersen, Beato apparently retired for some years from photography, concentrating on his parallel career as a financial speculator and trader. On 29 November 1884 Beato left Japan, ultimately landing in Port-Saïd (Égypte). It was reported in a Japanese newspaper that he had lost all his money on the Yokohama silver exchange.

[modifier] Later Years

From 1884 to 1885 Beato was the official photographer of the expeditionary forces led by Baron (later Viscount) G.J. Wolseley to Khartoum (Soudan) in relief of General Charles Gordon. None of the photographs Beato took in Sudan are known to have survived.

Briefly back in England, in 1886 Beato lectured the London and Provincial Photographic Society on photographic techniques. But by 1888 he was photographing in Asia again, this time in Burma, where from 1896 he operated a photographic studio (called "The Photographic Studio") as well as a furniture and curio business in Mandalay, with a branch office in Rangoon. Examples of his mail order catalogue - affixed with Beato's own photographs of the merchandise on offer - are in the possession of at least two photographic collections. Knowledge of his last years is as sketchy as that of his early years; Beato may or may not have been working after 1899, but in January 1907 his company, F. Beato Ltd., went into liquidation and it is presumed that he died shortly thereafter.

[modifier] Beato and photography

In the mid to late 19th century photography was often marked by the limitations of its technology, 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 necessitated by this process must have been a further incitement to Beato to carefully frame and position the subjects of his photographs. 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) sometimes are rendered a blur or disappear altogether during the long exposures. Such blurs are a common feature of 19th century photographs.

Beato, like other 19th century commercial photographers, 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 recreating 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 mètres.

While the signatures he shared with his brother are one source of confusion in attributing images to Felice Beato, there are additional difficulties in this task. When Stillfried & Andersen bought up Beato's stock they subsequently followed the common practice of 19th century commercial photographers of reselling the photographs under their own name. They (and others) also altered Beato's images by adding numbers, names and other inscriptions associated with their firm in the negative, on the print or on the mount. For many of Beato's images that were not hand-coloured, Stillfried & Andersen produced hand-coloured versions. All of these factors have caused Beato's photographs to be frequently misattributed to Stillfried & Andersen. Fortunately, Beato captioned many of his photographs by writing in graphite or ink on the back of the print. When such photographs are mounted, the captions can still often be seen through the front of the image and read with the use of a mirror. Besides helping in the identification of the subject matter of the image and sometimes in supplying a date for the exposure, these captions provide one method of identifying Felice Beato as the creator of many images.

[modifier] Notable photographs

[modifier] Quelques photographies sélectionnées

Information Cliquez sur une vignette pour l’agrandir.


  • Japon :

Palanquin (kago), vers 1880. (ou années 1860) ou 1867

Jeune femme jouant du shamisen (années 1860).

Exécution capitale au Japon au cours des années 1860.

Courtisane

[modifier] Références

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