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Biography of Francis Frith 1822 - 1898
A biography by Professor Margaret F HarkerHon FIIP Hon FRPS Hon FBKSTS DOPh
Francis Frith, was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, in 1822 and died in Cannes, France in 1898. He founded his photographic views publishing company in Reigate, Surrey, in 1859, prior to his third and final photographic tour of the Middle East in the summer of that year. Through his own enterprise, Frith became wealthy at a comparatively young age and decided to combine business with pleasure. He had a desire to make a lasting and interesting record of the places he visited. Photography, combined with publication provided the solution.
Francis Frith married Mary Ann Rosling in 1860. Her brother was Alfred Rosling, a talented amateur photographer. This connection could have fuelled Frith's ambition to become a photographer. By 1856 he felt sufficiently competent to take the cumbersome equipment required on his first tour of Egypt and Palestine in 1856-7, where the heat and strong light drove him to develop the negatives in tombs, temples and caves. On his return he successfully negotiated contracts with Thomas Agnew and Son to sell individual prints from the his large (16" x 20") negatives and with James S Virtue to publish albums of his photographs. The stereoscopic views he had taken for publication by Negretti and Zambra were especially popular when published late in 1857. He promptly departed again, this time travelling to Jerusalem, Syria and Lebanon. He was so delighted with the success of the publication: "Egypt and Palestine", that he undertook a third tour in the summer of 1859, venturing further South (to Soleb in Nubia) than anyprevious photographer. There he crossed the Sinai desert and finally re-photographed sites as far north as Jerusalem before returning home after a year abroad.
Francis Frith came from a Quaker family, Edward Fox being a frequent visitor to their home, and was a deeply religious man, a preacher and writer of prose and verse in his spare time. As was to be expected he was a devoted family man, and often took his family with him on his photographic tours in Britain. The party usually included his wife, six children, two servants and four photographic assistants.
Frith developed that rare combination of artistic sensibility (he was a skilled amateur painter) with considerable business acumen. His moral principles ensured that the camera did not lie when he took his photographs. He was most concerned to represent the three dimensional scene in two dimensions as faithfully as possible, whilst selecting viewpoints and lighting conditions which showed each subject to advantage. Whenever practicable he included people in his views to give an impression of scale and add information such as the fashions of the period, conveyances and popular pastimes. It is this thoughtful approach to photography which makes the F Frith & Co archive so valuable to researchers, historians and publishers and all who are interested in local history, both environmental and social.
To realise his ambition Francis Frith had to employ other photographers to take photographs to his specifications or to sell him photographs originally taken for other purposes. Francis Bedford, a highly regarded contemporary photographer, deposited two thousand of his negatives with the Francis Frith Company. Bedford was the only photographer to retain his name on the prints made for him by Frith and Company, with the exception of Roger Fenton who occasionally had work printed and published by Frith. Other photographers known to have supplied Frith & Company with photographs were A W Bennett, H Barton, Bell, Brown, Eaton, Griffiths and Leavor, the Hartnoll Brothers, Mereyard, Preston, A Pettit, Rosling, Tims, Frank Sutcliffe and Yallop. Francis Frith's early work bore his own signature, needled in reverse on the negative and appearing black in the print as 'Frith', followed by the date, in the bottom left corner. His own later work is not so identified and photographs by his associate photographers are anonymous. Nevertheless, in the nineteenth century, all the prints were identified either as Frith & Co , or F F & Co, or Frith's Series (the latter being embossed and not easy to see). In those instances where prints were mounted on board, the Frith name appears on the mount immediately under the print or embossed in the lower centre of the mount.
Fortunately for posterity Francis Frith was conscious of the importance of archival permanence if the photographic images were to last. From the outset he went to a great deal of trouble to establish sound photographic practice in the processing of the negatives and the prints. At the time of the closure of Frith and Company in 1970 a large stock of prints made in the nineteenth century were still in excellent condition.
Frith publications were prodigious. In addition to the folios of his own photographs published by James Vitue, William MacKenzie, Eyre and Spottiswood and Alfred Bennett, they also included the well known series entitled "Frith's Photo-Pictures" which are folios or albums of original prints of a specific district such as the Lake District, Dovedale, From the Lands of the Bible, Swiss Views and English Scenery. Two publications of unusual character were published by the Frith Company in 1864 under the titles of "The Gossiping Photographer at Hastings" and "The Gossiping Photographer on the Rhine", both with words and photographs by Francis Frith himself.
In addition to the photographic works at Reigate in Surrey, the Frith Company owned the Cotswold Collotype Works at Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, where illustrations for books and catalogues were printed and the postcard printing was done. From the early 1890's the chief concern of Francis Frith & Co was picture postcard production, the introduction of which greatly increased the demand for photographs of scenic views, street scenes and architectural subjects. It is this production for which Francis Frith & Co is most commonly remembered today. After Frith's death in 1898 the Company continued to use a network of photographers, all of whom were carefully briefed in the taking of the photographs to suit the Company's requirements. By 1914 there were 52,000 photographs in the archives, an additional 20,000 by 1939 and a further 200,000 were added during the nineteen forties, fifties and sixties.
The closure of the original company in 1971 and the probable abandonment of the unique historical and contemporary Archive was case for great concern. It was largely due to the perseverance of the photographic historian Bill Jay, that the Archive survived. He enlisted the help of a London advertising agency who approached Rothmans the tobacco company who bought and saved the Collection. After a number of vicissitudes the Collection was bought by John Buck in 1977 who formed the present day company which continues to publish photographs in the Frith tradition.
Today the F.Frith & Co. archive provides a valuable record of the physical and social changes that have taken place in the towns, villages and countryside of Britain between 1860 and 1970. The Collection includes photographs taken of streets, buildings and scenic views from identical or closely related viewpoint at time intervals. These make interesting and instructive comparisons possible and provide a detailed topographical record of changes in building design and construction, street furniture, dress and fashion, transport and business.
The author wishes to thank Claude Frith, a Grandson of Francis Frith for making family papers available to her and providing a personal account of Francis Frith, the family man, for the purposes of this introduction.
