Felice Beato : a photographer on the Eastern road

"Published on the occasion of the exhibition Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road, on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, from December 7, 2010 to April 4, 2011."
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We cite from the COVER:
"In recent years Felice Beato (1832-1909) has come to be recognized as one of the major photographers of the nineteenth century, yet until now there has been no general survey of his singular life and work. This abundantly illustrated book, the first to offer an overview of Beato's career, combines engaging text with a generous selection of photographs, including fold-out panoramas and hand-colored Japanese studies, to provide a compelling portrait of this seminal photographer."
"Born in Venice and raised on the Mediterranean island of Corfu,. Felice Beato came of age in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople. In 1856, as a young apprentice, he photographed the sites of the Crimean War, thereby launching a long and remarkably adventurous career. By the 1850s professional photographers faced a highly competitive commercial market, and a successful enterprise required good business sense as well as a gifted eye and perfect command of technique. Beato possessed all these traits in abundance, along with an abiding wanderlust. Over the next half century, he would follow in the wake of Britain's vast colonial empire. He photographed the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny in 1858 and 1859 and documented the definitive campaign of the Second Opium War in China the following year. He then pursued his work in Japan, chronicling the passing of the feudal era, as well as Korea, the Sudan, and Burma, capturing some of the first views of these lands as they began to open to the West. Beato's exceptionally diverse oeuvre comprises more than one thousand pictures in a wide range of genres—war photography, topographic and architectural views, portraits, and studies of local life."
"In this volume, Anne Lacoste offers an ample overview of Beato's career, tracing his development as a photographer and situating his work within the historical context of late-nineteenth-century Asia; sidebar texts illuminate such subjects as Beato's masterful technique and his innovative Japanese albums. Lacoste's judicious critical and biographical survey is complemented by the noted critic Fred Ritchin's thought-provoking essay examining the relevance of Beato's pioneering war photography to the image-saturated media culture of today. Readers will also find captivating period ephemera and a full chronology."