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
forged a new path for photography, creating images that he
knew would help the museum catalogue, classify, and also publicize
its growing collection.
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.