Frederick Evans

(BRITISH, 1853 - 1943)

Frederick Evans began his photographic career in 1898, upon his retirement from bookselling. He became internationally famous for his exquisite platinotype images of architectural subjects, principally English cathedrals, manors, and cloisters. Refusing to manipulate his prints in any way, Evans rendered the cool, massive stone buildings with an unsurpassed grandeur in straightforward contact prints from his plates. He was known to wait hours for the delicate, captivating light so evident in his images. He exhibited and wrote extensively and was widely, if unsuccessfully, imitated. Evans was also the first British photographer whose work Alfred Stieglitz published in Camera Work, his influential journal of photography. He ceased making prints in 1915 when platinum was no longer commercially available.