Notable as one of the world’s first war photographers, Roger Fenton (1819–1869) pursued a short but remarkable career, highlighted by several projects of considerable historical significance. He earned a degree in law and practiced for a short time, before discovering an interest in painting, pursuing art study first in London and then in Paris. Returning to England in 1843, he worked as a painter (none of his paintings survive). Fenton had become seriously interested in photography, taking his first photographs in 1852. For the next decade he would be active in the medium.
In September 1852, he traveled to Russia to take pictures of the Czar Nicholas I Chain Bridge under construction over the Dnieper River in Kiev (when completed, it was the largest suspension bridge in Europe). He accompanied John Cooke Bourne, the project’s primary photographer, and project engineer Charles Blacker Vignoles. They were able to visit Moscow and St. Petersburg, and photographs from this trip are in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum.
In 1853, Fenton was one of the founders of the Photographic Society (now the Royal Photographic Society), and served as its honorary secretary. He was also active in other artistic organizations, including the Society of Arts and the Architectural Photographic Association. The social and professional connections he made as a result of his involvement with these groups led to commissions to make portraits of the royal family at Windsor and Balmoral. He was made official photographer at the British Museum in 1853, and for more than seven years documented their natural history and art collections. His subjects included a group of fascinating skeletons, images of classical busts and the famed Assyrian reliefs.
The work Fenton produced in 1855 defined his prominent position in the history of photography. Sponsored by Manchester publisher, Thomas Agnew, and carrying letters of support from Prince Albert, he took a steamer to the Crimea in February 1855 to undertake photographic documentation of the war that had begun in October 1853. Fought between Russia, and an alliance of France, England, Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire, the conflict lasted until February 1856. Covered extensively by photographers (including James Robertson) and writers, no previous conflict had been so thoroughly documented. Fenton photographed battle sites and behind the scenes military operations, as well as making portraits of the officers and soldiers.
Accompanied by his assistant, Marcus Sparling, and his servant William, he took his horse-drawn darkroom into the field, making over 350 glass-plate negatives. By June, running low on materials, and ill with cholera, he returned to England.
Once home, Fenton exhibited his prints extensively throughout Britain, and by royal command gave private showings in September to Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and French Emperor Napoleon III, who all purchased sets of the photographs. Agnew subsequently published high-quality editions of Fenton’s work, but because they came out later than expected, they did not sell well as the war had ended, and public interest had diminished.
Much of Fenton’s other work is comprised of handsome landscapes of Wales and the Windsor Forest and beautiful views of English Gothic architecture, as well as still lifes and portraits.
In the summer of 1858, he produced nearly fifty Orientalist photographs, all made from models posed in his London studio. Although he had briefly stopped at Malta and Constantinople enroute to the Crimea in 1855, he made no photographs while there. Many of the props, which appear rearranged in different pictures, were owned by his friend, painter Frank Dillon (1824–1909), who had traveled extensively in Egypt, and executed canvases inspired by Arab subjects (Dillon modeled for some of Fenton’s photographs). When Fenton showed a selection from this series, the critical reaction was mixed. One writer praised them as “admirable illustrations of Eastern scenes of actual life,”1 and another felt they “convince us that we want new Arabian Nights.”2 But others were more skeptical, and one noted that “for a first appearance” of a new theme in his oeuvre, that they “are not so bad, still they are not such as please us.”3 Despite his titles, his models were not from the Middle East, and a reviewer reminded him of “the necessity of having real national types as models”4 if they were to convey a true sense of actual life in that region.
Nubian Model is typical of Fenton’s work from this series. In contrast to his Crimean photographs that were taken in the field, his Orientalist subjects were posed formally in the studio according to the conventions that were popular in contemporary painting. His wooden studio floor, partially covered with rugs, is clearly visible in Nubian Model. Fenton makes no attempt to conceal his artifice, and the jug she ostensibly balances is held in place by wires (as are the hands of models in other pictures). European carpets are visibly underneath the Turkish ones in others from this series. In decontextualizing his subjects, he has chosen to emphasize the exotic costumes of the men and women he photographed, the latter whose veiled faces with little visible but their eyes render them even more mysterious. Even when he posed them with props, they remain costume pieces, conveying no sense of the environments in which their real-life counterparts would be found. His fantasies of pashas, dancing girls, and odalisques reveal more about Victorian masquerade than about the East.
Fenton’s failing health and a more competitive market in photography, made him decide to give it up in 1862. He sold his equipment and returned to the practice of law, from which he retired in 1865. Four years later he died at the age of fifty.
Elizabeth Unbehaun
Roger Fenton, Nubian Model, c. late 1850s, albumen print, 27.4 x 17.5 cm, SOLARI 94.034.004L