Peterborough, The West Front

1851

The Great Exhibition in Hyde Park: discovering photography

Fenton visits the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park and is impressed by the photography on display; the new technique grips him so keenly that within a year he begins exhibiting his own photographs.

1853

Founding the London Photographic Society

Fenton becomes a founder and first secretary of the London Photographic Society, later the Royal Photographic Society under the patronage of Prince Albert.

1854

Commissioned to document the Crimean War

Probably in autumn 1854, powerful friends and patrons — among them Prince Albert and the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for War — urge Fenton to go to the Crimea; the London print publisher Thomas Agnew & Sons becomes his commercial sponsor. The photographs may have been meant to offset the war's unpopularity and to counter the critical reporting of William Howard Russell of The Times: they were to be converted into woodblocks for the less critical Illustrated London News.

1855

Cholera, heat and broken ribs in the Crimea

Despite the summer heat, breaking several ribs in a fall, suffering from cholera (the effects of which will contribute to his early death) and becoming depressed at the carnage he witnesses at Sevastopol, Fenton manages to make more than 350 usable large-format negatives.

c. 1855

An exhibition of 312 prints

Soon after his return an exhibition of 312 prints goes on show in London, and in the following months at various places across the country; Fenton also shows them to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and to Emperor Napoleon III in Paris. He is nevertheless disappointed that sales are less than he expected.

8 March – 22 June 1855

Fenton at Balaklava

Fenton sets off aboard HMS Hecla in February, lands at Balaklava on 8 March and stays until 22 June, taking Marcus Sparling as his photographic assistant, a servant known as William, and a large horse-drawn van of equipment.