Felice Beato

Felice Beato was one of the earliest globally mobile photographers, following British and French imperial campaigns from the Crimean War onward^*1. After photographing the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion and the Second Opium War, he moved to Yokohama in 1863 with the British illustrator Charles Wirgman and opened the Beato & Wirgman studio^*2. Beato understood very clearly what Western travelers wanted to see in the East, and he sold albums of Japanese landscapes, people, and customs while helping to establish the hand-colored album tradition in Japan. His work is therefore a major visual record of the transition from the late Tokugawa period to early Meiji society^*1. At the same time, the work is inseparable from imperial power, and it is now often examined critically in that context^*2.