Only a few of the campaign photographs reveal the devastation of human life that war inevitably brings. Beato’s documentation of the Second Opium War includes the only photographs of dead soldiers by any Western source at the time. The cumbersome camera he had to transport was too slow to photograph the battles themselves. Instead, Beato photographed battlefield scenes where the dead lay, and even rearranged the corpses to enhance the composition.
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Warning: these battlefield
images can be disturbing.
Left:“The North Taku Fort on the day of capture from the Chinese by the English and French armies during the Second China War. Wooden spikes made retreat perilous. t, A and Buffords, J H, 1856”
Photograph by Felice Beato,
August 22 or later, 1860
Wellcome Collection
[Beato_08-21-b-North-Fort]
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Left:“Interior of angle of North Fort immediately after its capture on 21st August 1860. Taku, China: the North Fort: Chinese corpses on the day of the fort's capture by the English and French armies during the Second China War.”
Photograph by Felice Beato, August 21, 1860
Wellcome Collection
[Beato_08-21-a-Taku-corpses]
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Left:“The North Fort, Dagu (Taku), Chinese corpses following the capture of the fort by the English and French armies on August 21st 1860, during the Second China War.”
Photograph by Felice Beato, August 21, 1860
Wellcome Collection
[Beato_08-21-b-Taku_corpses]
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Left:“Rear of the North Fort after its capture, showing the retreat of the Chinese Army on 21st August 1860. Dagu (Taku), China: the North Fort bearing raised British and French flags, corpses in the foreground, on the day of the fort's capture by the English and French armies during the Second China War.”
Photograph by Felice Beato, August 21, 1860
Wellcome Collection Scotland
[Beato_08-21-c-Taku_corpses]
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