The title of the first exhibition in the National Gallery of Art’s new permanent photography gallery is appropriately titled “All the Mighty World.” The exhibit, which spotlights the career of Roger Fenton, one of the most celebrated photographers of the 19th century, takes its name from William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.” While Fenton’s most sublime works were shot at the ruins of Tintern Abbey, the title is also suggestive of Fenton’s belief in the power of photographs to capture “all the mighty world” in a single print.
Due to the limitations of the era’s technology, such as long exposure times and the lack of artificial lighting, Fenton applied the fundamentals of painting and drawing to the medium of photo, creating a style ahead of his time. He was clearly a Victorian artist, which made him exceedingly popular during his lifetime. His rigidly composed shots were confirmations of the greatness and beauty of the British Empire and its culture.
The five rooms of the new photo gallery cover each of the distinct phases of Fenton’s short but prolific career: his time at the British Museum, his days in Russia, his coverage of the Crimean War, his fascination with the royalty and elite of Great Britain, and his brief flirtation with Orientalism.
As the first official photographer of the British Museum, Fenton took pictures of the artifacts for the museum’s publications and honed his understanding of light, shadows and contrast in the process.
In studies of Russia’s most famous buildings, he used unusual perspectives to display their prominent features. His “Domes of Churches in the Kremlin” (1852) focuses on the distinct onion-like domes characteristic of Russian Orthodox cathedrals. By focusing exclusively on the domes, Fenton separated them from the context of the cityscape and transformed them into abstract geometric forms.
His photos of the Crimean War, some of the first photos of war ever taken, focused on the honor and dignity of the British army and hid the true horror of the war.
Estate photographs such as “Terrace, garden and park, Harewood” (1859) were some of the first views the public had of the elegant, surreal playgrounds of the upper class. In other photos, he brought to life the imagery of Victorian poets like Wordsworth, where carefree children played among the stones and pillars of weathered abbeys in green landscapes.
In his Orientalist phase of 1858, Fenton loosely borrowed dress and cultural artifacts from Middle Eastern societies to create an imagined realm of sensuality and exotic splendor. While there were no more than fifty shots in the series, they contributed to Victorian misconceptions of the Far East.
Almost a century and a half since the work of Roger Fenton became the standard for Victorian photography, it remains today a testament to the artistic and technical innovation of the artists who experimented with the medium in its nascent stages. In that sense, the permanent gallery is a long overdue acknowledgement of the roots of photography as a medium of high art.
