Frederick H. Evans," Ely Cathedral, the Octagon".

Black and white photograph of the interior of Ely Cathedral, showing a view through to the choir from a side aisle or transept.

Frederick Evans began experimenting with photography in the mid-1880s while running a bookshop in Cheapside, London. He placed great emphasis, from the beginning, on producing technically brilliant and unmanipulated images. In 1898 he took up photography professionally, concentrating on architectural subject matter. He produced exquisitely unfettered images of the play of light on architectural forms. He was elected to the Linked Ring, an organisation dedicated to the promotion of photography as an art, in 1894. He was the first photographer to have his work reproduced in Camera Work and had his photographs shown by Stieglitz in the ‘291’ Gallery in New York. He continued to produce architectural photography in the 1900s, working for Country Life, but had completed his photographic career by 1913.

Photogravure is a development of a photomechanical printing process invented by W. H. Fox Talbot in 1858, which came in to use in a commercial from around 1880, after improvements by Karel Klic. In its original form, photogravure used a copper plate dusted with fine asphalt powder then coated with bichromated gelatin 'tissue' of the type used in carbon printing. The exposed and selectively hardened layer controlled the penetration of an etching solution, so that the printing plate was etched to different depths. Inked, it was used to transfer the image to a suitable paper. The lack of any regular or well defined image structure distinguishes it from other mechanical printing methods. Photogravure was used for quality reproduction of the work of many of the best known pictorial photographers in the 1890s and 1900s.

Frederick Evans began experimenting with photography in the mid-1880s while running a bookshop in Cheapside, London. He placed great emphasis, from the beginning, on producing technically brilliant and unmanipulated images. During the 1890s he travelled to the cathedral towns of England, pausing several weeks, for instance at Ely, to study the light and note which hour would reveal the deepest shadows and the softest details of the architecture. At Ely, Evans arranged with the Dean of the cathedral to have Victorian gas fittings and chairs removed while he was taking photographs. Although he did take some exterior views of English cathedrals, Evans' preference was for interiors, of which this image is a fine example.

PH.596-1900