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.

• Foreword, David Bomford
• Note to the Reader
• Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road, Anne Lacoste
• Portfolio: Plates 1–80
• Felice Beato and the Photography of War, Fred Ritchin
• Portfolio: Plates 81–120
• Selected Chronology
• Appendix: Facsimiles of the Henry Hering Catalogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index

Anne Lacoste is an assistant curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Fred Ritchin is a former photograph editor of the New York Times Magazine and is a professor of photography and imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.