563
Napoleon III. In 1858 he opened a photographic studio
in Rio de Janeiro and embarked on an ambitious proj-
ect with the support of Pedro II—producing a photo
documentary on the emperor’s vast realm with essays
by French author Charles Ribeyrolles titled Brésil
Pittoresque (Picturesque Brazil). Due to Ribeyrolles’
sudden death in 1860, the project was limited to Rio de
Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Bahia. The book contains
engravings from Frond’s photos, produced by Lemercier
in 1859, including the fi rst portrayals of plantation slaves
at work and rural life in Brazil. Frond set the standard
for landscape photography in Rio, and popularized
subjects such as Sugarloaf Peak and Outeiro da Glória
Church. He died in Varredes, France on January 16,
- Until six originals were found in 1994, the only
known examples of his work were the prints illustrating
Brésil Pittoresque. In 2004, researchers found 16 more
original Frond photos of Swiss settlements in Espírito
Santo province, commissioned by Pedro II in 1860 to
lure more European immigrants there.
Sabrina Gledhill
FRY, PETER WICKENS (D. 1860)
English photographer
Peter Wickens Fry qualifi ed as a solicitor and, towards
the end of his life, represented the London wet plate por-
trait photographer James Henderson in the 1854 court
case Talbot v. Henderson brought by Talbot for alleged
infringement of his calotype patent. Judgement on the
case was postponed as a result of the celebrated Talbot
v Laroche case, and Fry eventually gained damages and
costs for his client amounting to £330.
Fry developed an interest in photography in the
1840s, and was one of the founder members of the Pho-
tographic Club (often now referred to as the Calotype
Club), an informal grouping of enthusiastic users of
Talbot’s process. He later became a founder member of
the Photographic Society of London in 1853.
He fi rst collaborated with Archer shortly after Archer
published his account of the wet collodion process,
and at the Great Exhibition of 1851, Archer and Fry
contributed a single collodion positive (ambrotype) to
the photographic equipment exhibit staged by London
dealers Horne & Thornthwaite.
Fry counted many early photographers amongst
his friends, including photographers John Dillwyn
Llewellyn and fellow lawyer Roger Fenton, and was the
study of a well known caricature by the artist George
Cruikshank.
Obituaries to him were carried by both the British
Journal of Photography (October 1st 1860) and Pho-
tographic Notes four days later.
John Hannavy
FRY, SAMUEL
(active 1870s–1880s, d. 1980)
“When great diffi culties were looked for none were
found,” declared Samuel Fry in 1879, on progressing
from collodion to dry plates. Fry lived in Surbiton, Sur-
rey, England, but practised professionally throughout
the Thames Valley because it was the “favourite place
of residence for city merchants.” Fry travelled in a
horse-drawn van, which carried suffi cient equipment
to undertake views, groups and outdoor portraits, but
including “some small-sized plates of a more rapid
description, in case groups, portraits, or animals have
to be photographed.”
Eschewing the “stern necessity of keeping still for
portraits,” Fry explored the boundaries of “instantaneous
photography” and developed techniques to record “in
the twinkling of an eye.” By 1881, he had established
a company for manufacturing his own brand of plates,
the Kingston Special, which “preserve their qualities
indefi nitely in any climate.” Advertisements in The
Photographic Journal emphasised that tests involved
portraits and landscapes before despatch.
Warning readers that “we must remember that pho-
tography is still very young,” Fry published papers on
positive printing, printing on ivory, printing transparen-
cies, lunar photography, the moon in the stereoscope,
photography and its students, instantaneous photogra-
phy, defects, and remedies for paper prints, and often
lectured to South London Society.
Ron CallenderFRY, WILLIAM ELLERTON
(1846–1930)
The book The Occupation of Mashonaland by William
Ellerton Fry, privately published in 1891 offers a unique
visual record of the Pioneer Column expedition into the
area of Africa which is present day Zimbabwe, and the
establishment of Fort Salisbury.
William Ellerton Fry had arrived in South Africa in
1872 and worked briefl y as a farmer and a merchant,
before taking on the post of Secretary of the Royal
Observatory at Cape Town, a post he held for almost
twenty years, eventually attaining the position of As-
sistant Astronomer Royal. Then in 1890, enrolled as a
lieutenant in the Pioneer Corps, he accepted the role of
offi cial photographer to the Mashonaland expedition.
The expedition, amounting to several hundred sol-
diers, policemen and native bearers, trekked into areas
where a camera had never before been seen. Arriving
at the ruins of the city of Zimbabwe, Fry’s equipment
caused consternation. In a memoir written later, Henry
Hoste noted that “Fry, who was our offi cial photogra-
pher, got his camera going, to the great alarm of the