All The Mighty World: The Photographs Of Roger Fenton, 1852-1860

Roger Fenton (1819-1869) was Englands most celebrated and influential photographer during the 1850s, the golden age of this radically new medium. Fentons majestic pictures of cathedrals, country houses, and varied countryside were without peer in Englandas were his views of the royal castles and Houses of Parliament that embodied Britains power. But Fentons choice of subjects ranged more widely still: he was among the first to photograph the Kremlin and other landmarks of Moscow and Kiev; he was commissioned in 1855 to document the Crimean War, producing early war photographs; and he created theatrical Orientalist costume pictures and a startling series of lush still lifes. Fenton had first studied law and painting, but soon after he took up the camera he was making photographs that were technically superb and highly original in their handling of composition, perspective, atmosphere, and light. Always he strove to demonstrate tha