Roger, like many photographers, did not originally set out to become a photographer, in fact in 1838, aged 19, Roger went to University College London where he graduated in 1840 with a "first class" Bachelor of Arts degree, having studied English, Mathematics, Greek and Latin. In 1841, he began to study law at University College, evidently sporadically as he did not qualify as a solicitor until 1847, in part because he had become interested in studying to be a painter.
In 1843 Roger went to Paris, where he briefly studied painting in the studio of Paul Delaroche. When he registered as a copyist in the Louvre in 1844 he named his teacher as the history and portrait painter Michel Martin Drolling, who taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, but Fenton's name does not appear in the records of that school. By 1847 Fenton had returned to London where he continued to study painting under the tutelage of the history painter Charles Lucy, who became his friend and with whom, starting in 1850, he served on the board of the North London School of Drawing and Modelling. In 1849, 1850, and 1851 he exhibited paintings in the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy.
Fenton visited the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in London in 1851 and was impressed by the photography on display there. He then visited Paris to learn the waxed paper calotype process, most likely from Gustave Le Gray, its inventor. By 1852 he had photographs exhibited in England, and travelled to Kiev, Moscow and St. Petersburg making calotypes there, and photographed views and architecture around Britain.
Like many British artists, Fenton decided to take up photography after seeing examples of the new art form at the Great Exhibition in 1851. He trained in Paris with a leading photographer, and was making his first successful photographs by February 1852.
Fenton was a passionate advocate for photography throughout his short career. He founded what became the Royal Photographic Society, organised public exhibitions and pushed for copyright protection for photographs. He proved that photography was a worthy rival to the traditional arts of drawing and painting.
His published call for the setting up of a photographic society was answered with its establishment in 1853; the Photographic Society, with Fenton as founder and first Secretary, later became the Royal Photographic Society under the patronage of Prince Albert.
Fenton was England’s most impressive photographer of architecture. Almost every year from 1852 to 1860, Fenton set out on a photographic campaign in late summer or early autumn, in an effort to photograph all of Britain’s major cathedrals and abbeys, castles and stately homes.
Fenton managed to combine perfect technique with an unerring ability to choose the best vantage point and lighting conditions. This enabled him to capture the smallest details of architecture, while at the same time conveying a sense of monumentality.
Usually, Fenton took a series of pictures of each building. He often began with a distant view which included the natural setting and then moved closer to show its overall shape and main features. Finally, he would select individual details for still closer portrayal - a particular chapel, porch, or portal - sometimes including figures to give a sense of scale and to animate the scene.
In 1855 Fenton went to the Crimean War on assignment for the publisher Thomas Agnew to photograph the troops, with a photographic assistant (Marcus Sparling) and a servant and a large van of equipment. Despite high temperatures, breaking several ribs, and suffering from cholera, he managed to make over 350 usable large format negatives. An exhibition of 312 prints was soon on show in London. Sales were not as good as expected, possibly because the war had ended. Fenton was sent to the Crimean War as the first official war photographer at the insistence of Prince Albert. The photographs produced were to be used to offset the general aversion of the British people to an unpopular war, and to counteract the anti-war reporting of The Times. The photographs were to be converted into woodblocks and published in the less critical Illustrated London News, published in book form and displayed in a gallery. Fenton avoided making pictures of dead, injured or mutilated soldiers.
Due to the size and cumbersome nature of his photographic equipment, Fenton was limited in his choice of motifs. And because the photographic material of his time needed long exposures, he was only able to produce pictures of unmoving objects, mostly posed pictures. But he also photographed the landscape, including an area near to where the Light Brigade - made famous in Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" - was ambushed, called The Valley of Death; however, Fenton's photographs were taken in the similarly named The Valley of the Shadow of Death. Modern photographers consider this picture, taken while under fire, to be a seminal piece of war photography. Two pictures were taken of this area, one with several cannonballs on the road, the other with an empty road.
Although well known for his Crimean War photography, his photographic career lasted little more than a decade, and in 1862 he abandoned the profession entirely, selling his equipment and becoming almost forgotten by the time of his death seven years later. He was later formally recognised by art historians for his pioneering work and artistic endeavour.
Below are some of Roger’s work:
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