Reframing the Networks and Visualities of Imperial War Photography: Felice Beato in Asia

Reframing the Networks and Visualities of Imperial War Photography: Felice Beato in Asia

This fellowship at the Freer|Sackler will be used to develop path-breaking digital techniques for the analysis and display of historical photography.

In collaboration with the National Army Museum in London, this project will build on the applicant's research into the historical photography of Britain's imperial wars in Asia in the nineteenth century, as photographed by the Italo-British photographic pioneer Felice Beato (1832-1909). Famous for his photographs of the Indian Rebellion in 1858 and of the Second Opium War in China in 1860, Beato photographed other imperial conflicts in Asia and beyond, including the Third Anglo-Burmese War, and America's short-lived invasion of Korea in 1871. He had close links to British commanders and to individual soldiers, and was one of the first semi-official war photographers.

Beato is known for his willingness to photograph the dead bodies of (non-Western) soldiers, and for his manipulation of the battle scenes he documented, but his influence on contemporaries is unclear. The applicant will develop innovative digital techniques to reconstruct the social networks of Felice Beato and his war photography in order to understand how these photographs were produced and viewed, and how they helped to shape the visual world of empire in the nineteenth century. The applicant will use creative digital techniques to interpret and exhibit Beato's photographs in unexpected ways, identifying stories of anti-colonial resistance, and using design approaches to reveal events and interpretations half-hidden behind the photograph's dominant narrative.

Through this fellowship, the applicant will be able to work collaboratively with the Freer|Sackler and other Smithsonian institutions to develop these digital techniques and to disseminate them widely among curators and historians.