Introduction of the artist:

Felice BEATO (Italy)

Born in 1832, Venice, Italy. Died in 1909, Florence, Italy. Photographer.

Introduction of works:

Five Genii Temple, Canton, April 1860
albumen silver print from a wet collodion glass negative
The figure with the umbrella at the centre of the image is the English artist Charles Wirgman (1832-1891)who
worked for the Illustrated London News. He worked closely with Beato in China and some of his illustrations
are derived from Beato's photographs.

Bridge in Temple of Five Genii, Canton, April 1860
albumen silver print from a wet collodion glass negative
This Taoist temple - also called the Temple of the Five Immortals - was built in 1377. In Cantonese it is called
Wuxian Guan. The name refers to the famous story about the origins of Canton / Guangzhou in which the
Five Celestial Beings came to the city riding on five celestial rams and brought rice and the knowledge of rice
cultivation to the people as a means of avoiding the scourge of famine. The Five Genii Temple is situated in
Huifu Rd., just west of Jiefang Zhonglu, Guangzhou.

Gallery in Confucius Temple, Canton, April 1860
albumen silver print from a wet collodion glass negative
This temple formed part of the College of the Nanhai District, Hio Kung, and was located close to the Temple of the Five Genii
in the Tartar Quarter.

The earliest vision of Imperial China in Europe was shaped by the late 13th-century travelogue, commonly known as the Travels of Marco Polo, or nicknamed Il Milione (the Million). This book was dictated by the Venetian merchant Marco Polo in 1298 and it describes his travels to China between 1271 and 1291. China would only become ‘visible’ to most people in the West after the invention of photography in 1839. As the semi-official photographer of the Anglo-French North China Expeditionary Force, Felice Beato came to China in the mid nineteen century. During a few months stay in Canton (Guangdong), he made approximately one hundred large plate photographic images (10 by 12 inches) of the city of Guangzhou. Principally surviving in the form of private albums, these are the earliest known photographs of China.

In the past thirty or more years, China has witnessed extraordinary developments in both scale and depth. As Chairman Mao once taught, ‘no construction without destruction’, which seems to be not only an oath for his Cultural Revolution (1966-76) to China nearly half of a century ago, but also as a prophecy of today’s urban developments. Constructions in China are not merely efforts of improvement, but indeed an act of revolution, to fundamentally replace the ‘old’ with an entirely ‘new’ visual experience. Buildings, architectural complexes, streets and even a whole city can be transformed from one physicality to another offering little trace of what has gone on before.

Envisaging all these transformations in China that engender both excitement and anxiety, ‘revolutionary’ urbanisation has proved one of the most inspiring and successful topics in contemporary photography. Here, this series of documentary photographs of the Qing dynasty offers an extreme example of the unseen past, or indeed, an opportunity to travel together with Beato and Polo, to a remote and admiring kingdom, or a somehow alienated homeland.