• Introduction
• Early Views
• Russia
• The Crimean War
• The British Museum
• Excursions to Scotland and Wales
• Royal Portraits
• Sacred and Secular Architecture
• Orientalist Studies
• Stately Homes and Landscapes
• Late Works
• Final Years
• Selected Highlights
• Exhibition Information

The British Museum, 1854–1858

In 1853, Fenton was hired as the first official photographer to the British Museum. Eager, in his own words, "to be connected with so useful an application of the photographic art," he forged a new path for photography, creating images that he knew would help the museum catalogue, classify, and also publicize its growing collection.

Elephantine Moa (Dinornis elephantopus), an Extinct Wingless Bird, in the Gallery of Fossils, British Museum (detail) 1854-1858, salted paper print The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

One of Fenton's greatest challenges was to illuminate the objects without artificial light. Portable works of art—Assyrian tablets or manuscripts—were brought to the roof of the museum, where Fenton had built a studio. He devised ingenious solutions to cope with harsh daylight shadows, such as placing his camera in a box with curtains to shield the lens from direct sunlight. With his assistants, he also made a remarkable number of prints for the museum—by May 1856 they had produced more than eight thousand.