These Photos Taken By A War Photographer Are The First Images Of Corpses On The Battlefield

In 1856, when Felice Beato was only 24, a photographer named James Robertson sent him to photograph the battle sites of the Crimean War. The battle had been extensively covered in the Western press – and equally photographed thanks to Beato. However, Robertson himself signed the 150 photographs that he brought back. Thankfully, contemporary sources such as the Times London noted that "Mr. Robertson... has sent up an intelligent photographer to the Crimea, and he is now engaged in fixing, as far as possible, every remarkable sight on paper."

Funnily enough, the man who kick-started Beato's career, James Robertson, became Beato's brother-in-law in 1855, before he sent Beato to document the Crimean War.  

From a young age, Beato and his family moved around. He was born in Venice, Italy, in 1832, raised on an island off of Greece, and moved with his family to Constantinople in 1844 (which is where he met James Robertson). 

Beato, his brother Antonio, and Robertson went on a photographic expedition to the Middle East in 1857, and they visited Palestine, Egypt, and Greece. By this point, Beato had been sufficiently bitten by the travel bug and spent the rest of his life wandering the world, following the expansion of the British empire throughout the East. He visited countless countries and took countless photographs along the way, earning him the ability to be one of the first to photograph countries such as India, China, Burma, and Japan. 

As the British Empire expanded across the East in the 19th century, so did the British people's curiosity about these foreign lands. Beato had already taken advantage of Britain's interest in the Indian Mutiny by photographing the aftermath of the revolt. As Beato continued to hone his photographic skills, the market for photographs of places previously unavailable to Westerners was booming. These photographs were collected as souvenirs and seen as more impartial than paintings.

Luckily for Beato, because of his extensive travel in the East, he was able to be one of the first photographers to capture these mysterious lands – besides war photography, Beato was well-known for his architectural and cultural photographs. Beato's diverse range of photographs catered to a very specific audience and preserved a very specific moment in time – the expansion of the British Empire and its direct effects on these Eastern countries.

Despite Britain's immense interest in Eastern lands – and the wars and rebellions occurring in these foreign places – no one had photographed war before Felice Beato, because of "Victorian sensibilities." In the mid-to-late 19th century, Victorians were considered prudish, demure, and rigid, and therefore sensitive to gruesome material. In her book on Felice Beato, Anne Lacoste writes:

Other photographers, in deference to Victorian sensibilities, avoided picturing the full carnage of war; Beato was the first to depict the actual devastation of the battles sites, including enemy corpses and scattered bones lying among the ruins.

Beato was, simply put, a renegade who didn't care what other people thought or about what the 'norm' was, and he used his unique perspective as a Westerner in Eastern countries to capture the first war photographs in history. 

Photography was fairly new at the time Beato's career was taking off. Unlike today, where a picture can be snapped in seconds, Beato and his contemporaries were restricted to a lengthier exposure time – this meant that it was nearly impossible to capture war in the heat of the moment. Beato needed a stationary subject, leaving him few options when photographing war. 

He was inventive, though, and knew he had to find a way around the 'listlessness' of photographs in comparison to extravagant, detailed paintings. He learned how to tell a story with his photographs, becoming a pioneer of photojournalism before the newspapers could even reprint his photographs. By using techniques he learned as an apprentice to Robertson, such as taking panoramic photographs, Beato was able to construct a narrative through photography in a way previously inaccessible to photographers. 

Since photography required a longer exposure period, it was impossible to capture battles as they were happening in real time. Photographers were relegated to the aftermath, and Beato took advantage of this to set the stage however he wanted. He only photographed enemy corpses, and he even dug up the buried bones of those massacred at a palace in Lucknow, India, to make the scene more dramatic.

Beato was not the only one to stage his photographs – a contemporary of his, Roger Fenton, moved cannonballs to the middle of a road to further exacerbate the chaos he was trying to capture.