Francis Frith
1857
Fallen Statue at the Ramesseum, Thebes
[Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views, with Descriptions by Mrs. Poole and Reginald Stuart Poole]

Albumen print, from wet collodion negative
38.3 x 48.2 cm (15 1/16 x 19 ins) (image) 61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 ins) (mat)
 
Cleveland Museum of Art
Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund, 1992.236
 
Description (Accessed: 7 February 2019)
Overcoming both physical dangers and technical difficulties, Francis Frith traveled to obscure regions of the world to capture exotic images for an eager Victorian audience. Taken on the second of three trips to Egypt, this photograph was created with a mammoth plate (typically an 18-x-22-inch glass negative), which enabled the artist to capture the smallest details of a scene. Here Frith conveyed the monumentality of the ancient Egyptian sculpture by including members of his expedition in the picture. The image was published in an album containing 20 mammoth-plate views, the only published volume of Frith's large photographs and one of the first devoted to large-scale prints.
 
LL/87412