All the Mighty World: The Photographs of Roger Fenton, 1852–1860

Roger Fenton, the most celebrated and influential photographer in England during the medium's "golden age" of the 1850s, is the subject of this major exhibition. "All the Mighty World: The Photographs of Roger Fenton, 1852–1860" brings together ninety of the artist's most compelling and best preserved works, drawn from seventeen European and North American institutions and private collections. Together they reveal Fenton (1819–1869) as a towering figure in the history of photography and an unparalleled master of all the young medium's genres—architecture, landscape, portraiture, still life, reportage, and tableau-vivant.

The exhibition is made possible by The Hite Foundation.

The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; and The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

One of the artists most highly revered by photograph historians and collectors, Fenton was profoundly influenced by the great English Romantic painters and poets of the early nineteenth century. The exhibition takes its title, "All the Mighty World," from William Wordsworth's "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," an ode to nature in which the author declares himself "A lover of the meadows and the woods, / And mountains; and of all that we behold / From this green earth; of all the mighty world / Of eye and ear, both what they half-create, / And what perceive."

Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum, remarked: "The poet's words find an echo in the reverence for nature so evident in Fenton's landscapes, and, even more aptly, they suggest the photographer's grand ambition and broad reach. In the course of a single decade, Fenton produced majestic architectural views of England's ruined abbeys and her stately homes, Romantic depictions of the countryside, moving reportage of the Crimean War, intimate portraits of Queen Victoria and her family, enchanting Orientalist tableaux, and astonishingly lush still lifes. The Metropolitan Museum is pleased to introduce our public to one of photography's greatest and most versatile masters."

Exhibition Overview Before taking up the camera, Roger Fenton studied law in London and painting in Paris. He traveled to Russia in 1852 and photographed the landmarks of Kiev and Moscow; founded the Photographic Society (later designated the Royal Photographic Society) in 1853; and was appointed the first official photographer of the British Museum in 1854. Fenton achieved widespread recognition for his photographs of the Crimean War in 1855, including portraits of confident commanders and shell-shocked soldiers, scenes of Balaklava Harbor and of the allied camps, and views of the terrain of battle. Among the most understated but moving of these is Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles), a barren landscape littered with cannonballs. Read Roger Fenton's letters from the Crimea.

Fenton's greatest artistic achievement, however, came in the realms of landscape and architectural photography. He traveled extensively throughout England, Wales, and Scotland, photographing picturesque and sublime aspects of the countryside. The most compelling of these views, works such as Landscape with Clouds and Wharfe and Pool below the Strid (1856 and 1854, both The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), call to mind cloud studies by Constable and explorations of light and atmosphere by Turner. They are intensely felt meditations on the observable world, infused with a reverence for nature and a delight in sensory experience.

As a photographer of architecture, too, Fenton was without parallel among his countrymen. He assigned himself the task of photographing the major churches and abbeys of Great Britain and, working in a format as large as 14 x 18 inches, wedded perfect technique with an unerring ability to choose the precise vantage point and lighting conditions that would best render the smallest details of architecture, convey a sense of monumentality, and imbue his pictures with a Romantic spirit. His subjects included the gothic cathedrals of Salisbury, Wells, Lincoln, and Lichfield; Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, and the British Museum; and the ruined abbeys of Rievaulx, Fountains, Roslin, and Lindisfarne. Of particular note are four views of Windsor Castle on loan from The Royal Collection and fourteen prints from the collections of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.

Impressed by his architectural and landscape photographs, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert invited Fenton to photograph their children, a task he accomplished with great sensitivity. Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh (1856) is a surprisingly intimate portrait of a brooding young royal on the grounds of Balmoral Castle. The print, one of twenty-four on loan from the Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford, England, is an exceptionally dark and rich salted paper print that, like most in the exhibition, is in unusually superb condition.

Perhaps inspired by the experience of traveling through Constantinople en route to Balaklava, or perhaps simply sharing the mid-nineteenth-century vogue for all things exotic, Fenton produced a theatrical suite of Orientalist compositions during the summer of 1858—costume pieces such as Pasha and Bayadere (J. Paul Getty Museum) and Nubian Water Carrier (National Museum of Photography, Film & Television) that strove for high art rather than documentation and that were, in a sense, an antidote to the harsh realities that Fenton had recorded in the Crimea.

In 1862, after a final series of photographs—a remarkable group of lush still lifes of fruit, flowers, and objets d'art—and for reasons both personal and professional, Fenton sold his equipment and negatives, resigned from the Royal Photographic Society, and returned to the practice of law. In the course of a single decade, Fenton had played a pivotal role, by advocacy and example, in demonstrating that photography could rival drawing and painting not only as a means of conveying information, but also as a medium of visual delight and powerful expression.

Gilman Paper Company Collection Malcolm Daniel, curator in charge of the Metropolitan's Department of Photographs and one of the curators of the exhibition, noted that "All the Mighty World" includes twelve pictures recently acquired by the Museum as part of the landmark acquisition of the Gilman Paper Company Collection, announced in March 2005. Works in the exhibition from the Gilman Collection include a self-portrait that is among Fenton's first endeavors in the medium, early views of Russia, Crimean War scenes, and a late still life, as well as architectural and landscape photographs.

Organizers and Credits "All the Mighty World: The Photographs of Roger Fenton, 1852–1860" is curated by Malcolm Daniel, curator in charge of the Metropolitan's Department of Photographs; Sarah Greenough, curator and head of the Department of Photographs, National Gallery of Art, Washington; and Gordon Baldwin, associate curator of Photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

At the Metropolitan, the exhibition is designed by Michael Langley, exhibition designer, with graphics by Sophia Geronimus, senior graphic designer. Conservation for the exhibition was directed by Nora Kennedy, Sherman Fairchild Conservator of Photographs. Lighting is by Clint Ross Coller and Rich Lichte, lighting designers, both of the Museum's Design Department.

Roger Fenton
All the Mighty World
Kuratoren: Malcolm Daniel, Sarah Greenough, Gordon Baldwin