Dreaming with Beato

We don’t know a lot about Felice Beato. It’s believed he was one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. A death certificate, discovered in 2009, reveals Beato was born in 1832 in Venice. Details about his life have been pieced together from photographs signed with his name.

Following this trail of signed photographs led to some confusion, as he appeared to be capturing images in places as distant as Egypt and Japan at the same time. In 1983, it was discovered that “Felice Antonio Beato” represented two brothers, Felice Beato and Antonio Beato, who sometimes worked together, and shared a signature. This continues to cause problems today in identifying who took which photo.

Beato’s time in Japan in the 1860s documents the landscapes, people, and culture of the country’s transitional years from a feudal government to an imperial one. He shot using a process common at the time, called ‘daguerreotype’, which was laborious and often hazardous, involving substances such as mercury vapor.

The resulting images and their imperfections are mysterious and haunted; their dreamlike quality enhancing the sense of peering into a distant time and place. More than mere photographs, they’re windows into a different era, imbued with nostalgia.

Although rare, it’s still possible to find photo studios offering daguerreotype portraits. Here in Tokyo, just a few photographers are keeping the technique alive, and it makes me wonder how I might utilize the style for Ghoul.

If Beato had traveled to Ghoul to capture the first images of life there, what he would have come back with?