British Vno
Known for his extraordinary interior photographs of churches and portraiture, Frederick Henry Evans went against the prevailing winds of his era in photography to produce startling modern, historically important photographs at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. Despite his international renown in midlife, Evans's early years are largely unknown. Born in 1853, Evans was self-educated, and in the 1870s, he was a bank clerk. In his early 20s, because of poor health, he visited Boston and lived with his aunt for a year. Health was also the reason for visiting England's Lake District, where the scenery made a deep impression.
In keeping with the scientific era, Evans bought a microscope in the 1880s, and then took up photography to record the images. The Royal Photographic Society, in 1887, awarded him a medal for his photomicrographs of shells. In the 1880s, he left clerking and became a partner, and later, sole owner of a London bookstore. The book shop attracted a remarkable clientele, which included George Bernard Shaw whose writing on Ibsen Evans recommended to appropriate customers. In addition to a considerable literary background, Evans also acquired a connoisseur's appreciation of art, and he collected drawings, prints, and Japanese artifacts. Evans recognized the artistic talent of the 18-year-old Aubrey Beardsley, a frequent browser in the store, and it was Evans who recommended this young artist to the publisher J. M. Dent.
Evans's photography included portraiture, and Beardsley proved one of his best subjects in a photograph showing him in profile, his long hands supporting his chin. The pose of this young artist of the Decadence referred to a gargoyle on Notre Dame de Paris.
While running his unusual bookstore, Evans pursued photography in his spare time, and in 1894, he photographed York Minster, where he would return in 1902 to make In Sure and Certain Hope, whose title comes from The Book of Common Prayer.
Typically, Evans would visit a cathedral town for days so he could experience the sacred building under many different conditions. If necessary to achieve the right effect, he would pressure church officials to remove furniture and even gas lighting fixtures.
He usually used a 4 x 5-inch camera and occasionally an 8 x 10 camera. Double-coated Cristoid films were used so that shadows and highlights would be recorded on fast and slow emulsions to assure maximum detail. A battery of lenses up to 19 inches in focal length was used to get the desired coverage and perspective. Typically, exposures ranged from several seconds to hours at f/32. The negatives were always printed on platinum paper, which yielded an especially subtle range of middle tones.
Health forced Evans to retire from book selling, and he moved to Epping in 1898, but this allowed him to pursue photography full time. In 1892, some photographers seceded from the London Photographic Society (after 1894, The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain) and formed the Linked Ring, a select international group open to women and featuring the annual Photographic Salon. Evans was invited to join the Linked Ring in 1900, where he was a leading advocate for the Purist faction as opposed to the Pic-torialists or Impressionists, who advocated using manipulative techniques.
As designer and installer of the Linked Ring's Photographic Salon exhibitions at the Dudley Gallery in London from 1902-1905, Evans showed skill and imagination in transforming a somber space and usual hanging methods into a well lit area with photographs arranged to emphasize visual statements. These ideas spread to the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession. Evans corresponded extensively with Alfred Stieglitz, leader of the Photo-Secession in New York and publisher of Camera Work, where Evans's work and ideas were well represented.
Without training in traditional art media, Evans could not practice the manipulative techniques others used to emulate fine art. Consequently, he championed straight or pure photography and wrote frequently in journals such as Amateur Photographer and Photography, where he championed his beliefs about photographic art. While praising the gum bichromate works by Robert Demachy and other outstanding artists using manipulative tech niques, he did not wish to call such images photography. Evans believed photography could achieve the level of art through the medium's limitations rather than with hybrid imitations. While he sometimes resorted to retouching and other corrective measures, he staunchly maintained there should be no tampering with the negative or print.
Such perfectionism was not an end in itself, and Evans aimed for what he called ''cathedral picture-making '' in which the result would give the viewer an emotional experience equivalent to what might be felt at the actual site. He pursued this aesthetic in all aspects of his photography, including landscapes where trees were photographed for their architectural resemblances. This idea of art through a limited medium was extended to his other passion, the pianola, and though critics derided him, Shaw, another pianola enthusiast, defended him.
Evans was influenced by J. M. W. Turner's architectural watercolors, as well as by Odilon Redon's contemporary Symbolist prints, which he collected. In addition, he steeped himself in the theology of correspondences of the eighteenth century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg as interpreted in the writings of James John Garth Wilkinson. The metaphoric title, A Sea of Steps (1903), showing the stone, wave-like steps to the Wells Cathedral Chapter House, would seem to suggest Evans's interest in Swedenborgian thinking as well as in the Symbolist movement.
The purist approach also suggests influences from critic John Ruskin's emphasis on depicting facts and those Pre-Raphaelites who aimed for ''photographic'' detail. Evans was not a social activist like William Morris, though he shared the Arts and Crafts leader's views on work, and in 1896, he photographed Morris's Kelmscott Manor.
Evans reached a wider audience when Country Life published his work on English churches in 1904-1905. This magazine then offered him an open commission, so he chose to photograph mostly chateaux and small churches in France from 19061907. Around World War I, Evans concentrated on photographing works of art, which were then privately published in platinotype editions. Never one to compromise, he could not accept silver-based papers, which were replacing platinum paper. So, he stopped photographing.
When he died in London on 24 June 1943, few were familiar with his achievements. The Royal Photographic Society reawakened interest in his work through a memorial exhibition in 1944.
John Fuller
See also: Architectural Photography; Coburn, Alvin Langdon; History of Photography: Nineteenth-Century Foundations; Linked Ring; Portraiture; Royal Photographic Society; Stieglitz, Alfred
Biography
Born 26 June 1853. Little known of his early years, but in 1870s was a clerk in a London clearing house. Around 1873, went to Boston for a year because of health. Purchased camera in 1883, made photomicrographs. Bookstore operator in London in 1880s. Became friends with George Bernard Shaw, helped launch Aubrey Beards-ley's career. Photographed cathedrals, landscapes, and portraits. Retired from bookstore in 1898, and moved to Epping. Elected to Linked Ring in 1900, from 1902-1905 in charge of London Photographic Salon. Featured in Camera Work 4 (October 1903). Photographed English parish churches for Country Life, 1905. In 1906-1907 photographed French chateaux and churches for Country Life. Joined London Secession, 1908. Landscapes reproduced in George Meredith Memorial Edition, 19 09-1911. Membership in the London Salon Club, 1910. Interior photographs of Westminster Abbey for Country Life, 1911. From 1912-1919, privately published editions of platinum prints of artist's works. Made Honorary Fellow of The Royal Photographic Society, 1928. Died 24 June 1943.
Individual Exhibitions
1899 Architectural Club, Boston, Massachusetts
1900 Royal Photographic Society, London, England
1904 Camera Club, London, England
1913 Amateur Photographer's ''Little Gallery,'' London, England
1917 Hampshire House, London, England
1919 Westminster Abbey photographs at Royal Photographic Society, London, England
1922 Royal Photographic Society, London, England
1932 Photographic Society, London, England
1933 Manchester Amateur Photographic Society, Manchester, England
1944 Memorial Exhibition; Royal Photographic Society, London, England
Group Exhibitions
1890 Royal Photographic Society Annual Exhibition, London, England
1891 At Home Portraits; The Photographic Society, London, England
1892 Invitation Exhibition; Camera Club, London, England
1894 Photographic Salon, London, England
1899 American Institute, New York, New York
1901 London Photographic Salon, London, England
1903 F. Holland Day Studio, Boston, Massachusetts
1906 Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, New York,
New York
1910 International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography; Albright Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Selected Works
Kelmscott Manor: Attics, c. 1897
Portrait of Alvin Langdon Coburn in Eastern Costume, 1901 In Sure and Certain Hope, York Minster, 1902 A Sea of Steps, Wells Cathedral: Stairs to Chapter House, 1903 Stairs to St. Catherine's Well, Winchelsea, c. 1905 A Fifteenth Century Doorway, Ely, 1903
Further Reading
Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly, 1903-1917. Reprint, New York: Kraus Reprints, 1969. Fuller, John. ''Frederick H. Evans as Late Victorian.'' Afterimage vol. 4, no. 4 (October 1976): 6-7, 18.
Hammond, Anne. Frederick H. Evans: Selected Texts and Bibliography. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1992.
Hammond, Anne. ''Frederick Evans—The Spiritual Harmonies of Architecture.'' In British Photography in the Nineteenth Century. Edited by Mike Weaver. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Hammond, Anne. ''Frederick Evans's Parish Churches for Country Life.'' History of Photography vol. 16, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 9-17.
Naef, Weston J. The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz. New York: Viking Press, 1978.
Newhall, Beaumont. Frederick H. Evans. Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1973.
Frederick H. Evans, Kelmscott Manor: Attics, ca. 1897, platinum print, 15.6 x 20.2 cm, Museum Purchase: ex-collection Gordon Conn.
[Photograph courtesy of George Eastman House, permission supplied by Janet Stenner]
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