527
and encourage interaction between members in dealing
with the medium’s challenges and constraints.
At the Society’s inaugural meeting on January 20,
1853, Fenton read a number of important papers on
how the new society might conduct its business. He was
elected as Honorary Secretary and, three weeks later,
with Hunt and Vignoles, established the Publications
Committee, becoming co-publisher with Dr John Percy
of the Journal of the Photographic Society.
Fenton’s decision to turn his hobby into a profession
was taken in the summer of 1853, and seems to have
been provoked by a request from the British Museum
for advice on the establishment of a photographic studio
and darkroom. Independently, both Fenton and Philip
Henry Delamotte were asked to advise, and both agreed
willingly. Each man also offered his services to the
museum as photographer—Delamotte in August 1853
and Fenton two months later. On the recommendation
of Wheatstone’s Fenton was appointed, and for the next
six years he maintained an important association with
the museum.
Fenton produced a wide-ranging body of work, much
of it photographed on the ‘leads,’ a fl at roof area where
a makeshift open-air daylight studio could be set up.
The manhandling of rare works of art and historical
artefacts up to this location, and dusting them with chalk
to reduce refl ection, suggest that the value of creating
photographic images for dissemination throughout the
world at times overruled the normal considerations of
conservation.
In his business dealings with the museum, he intro-
duced a number of innovative marketing approaches,
including an agreement to produce negatives without
charge in return for the right to sell prints himself
made after the museum’s orders had been fulfi lled. This
culminated in the establishment of a sale kiosk in the
museum foyer, where images were sold to the visiting
public by Fenton’s staff. The success of this venture, in
addition to substantial print orders from the museum
trustees themselves, kept a number of staff at Fenton’s
printing establishment occupied.
While his work with the museum was proceeding,
Fenton was also moving into other areas of photography.
In early 1854 he was commissioned by Queen Victoria
to produce a series of formal and informal royal por-
traits, resulting in some of the most atypical and striking
portraits of the Queen ever produced. His abilities as a
portrait photographer and as a creator of informal ‘tab-
leaux vivants,’ which is evidenced by a body of work
produced at Buckingham Palace, Balmoral Castle and
Windsor Castle, were considerable.
Later in 1854, during a photographic trip to Yorkshire,
he fi eld-tested the photographic van with which he would
subsequently travel to the Crimea. The 360 Crimean War
images, which he produced between March and June
1855, ensured that the legend ‘fi rst war photographer’
would invariably be attached to his name.
The Crimean War images, produced for commercial
sale through the printsellers Thomas Agnew & Sons
and P. & D. Colnaghi, were photographed to an agenda
which avoided confronting Victorian sensibilities, and
which was more than a little conscious of the political
importance of the story being told. Fenton’s letters
home—to Agnew and to his wife Grace—established the
true story of the war as seen through the photographer’s
eyes in a way his pictures did not.
While photography was undoubtedly limited in what
could be captured—considering the low sensitivity of
the wet collodion process, and the cumbersome nature
of the equipment—Fenton’s images contain little of the
drama found in photographs by James Robertson, and
others. Only on one occasion, in the chilling Valley of
the Shadow of Death is there any suggestion of the real
nature of what has been described as the last medieval
war, and the fi rst of the modern era. Otherwise the
body of work for which Fenton is most widely known
consists of fi nely executed camp scenes, harbour scenes
and military portraits. As a commercial venture they
enjoyed limited success, as the war was over before
they were made widely available to the public. The
long-term damage to Fenton’s health from the cholera
he contracted while in the war zone contributed to his
early death.
It is interesting to observe that despite the often
highly critical published reviews of his architectural and
landscape photographs in the early 1850s, Fenton rose
to a position of pre-eminence in these branches of pho-
tography in the mid and later 1850s and early 1860s.
His mastery of light and of composition take his im-
ages well beyond the obviously picturesque, although
clearly paying homage to the Victorian ideals of the
romantic landscape. Abbeys, priories, great houses and
castles, and the rolling landscapes of Lancashire and
Yorkshire were frequent subjects—often taken dur-
ing visits to his family or his wife’s families—while
views in the Scottish Highlands date from his visit to
Balmoral.
Several visits to North Wales resulted in a fi ne series
of large views, and an extensive collection of images for
the Brewster stereoscope, later published both as books,
and as sets of stereocards. In these majestic images, the
wet collodion negative process and albumen printing
paper were often pushed to their limits to capture the
fl eeting subtleties of light and shade. In Ribblesdale, his
subject matter ranged from the impact of industry on the
landscape—the Bobbin Mills at Hurst Green—through
to the delicate tones and hues of Morning, the Keeper’s
Round, where shooting into the low sun, Fenton captures
a gamekeeper, seemingly oblivious to the camera, walk-
ing his dawn round.