The Temple of the Winds, Athens (#631)

Francis Frith

c. 1860

A crisp albumen silver photograph of Athens’s ancient Tower of the Winds (the Roman Horologion), made by Francis Frith around 1860 to record and share classical ruins with a Victorian audience.

You’re first struck by the squat octagonal stone tower with its worn reliefs set in sharp focus against lighter houses and the looming Acropolis, while a cast‑iron lamp and a quiet street give a palpable sense of scale and layered time.

Frith’s picture exemplifies 19th‑century photography’s role in documenting archaeology and shaping popular and scholarly views of the classical past by producing reproducible, highly detailed images for a broad public.

Palette

Art Terms

Albumen silver print Photography Documentary photography Architecture Classicism Cityscape

Exhibitions

Nineteenth-Century Photographs from the Arnold H. Crane Collection

1979

Before Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography

1981

Photography as Printmaking

1968

Sixty Photographs: A Survey of Camera Esthetics

1940