Roger Fenton (1819-1869)

View images of Roger Fenton's salted paper prints.

A solicitor with an interest in painting, Roger Fenton learned the art of photography around 1850. Within a short time he emerged as a well-known figure in the British photography scene, becoming the honorary secretary of the Royal Photographic Society, of which he was a founding member, and the first official photographer of the British Museum. He photographed many churches and abbeys in Great Britain as well as views of the countryside. The publisher Thomas Agnew & Sons commissioned Fenton to document the Crimean War, the first use of the media to document a war campaign. Using glass plate negatives and the wet collodion process, Fenton captured camp life, panoramas of battle scenes, and individual and group portraits of officers and soldiers. The prints were later exhibited in London and available by subscription.