Lincoln Cathedral

Francis Frith

c. 1860

A mid-19th-century albumen silver print by Francis Frith that seeks to document and celebrate the monumental presence of Lincoln Cathedral, presenting its Gothic architecture with careful, documentary clarity.

You are struck by the cathedral’s soaring towers and vertical ribs—rendered in crisp monochrome—looming over the tiny, low-roofed houses in the foreground so that scale and intricacy become immediately apparent.

This work illustrates how early architectural photography made historic monuments widely visible to a growing Victorian audience, fueling interest in heritage, tourism, and the preservation of medieval architecture through reproducible images.

Palette

Art Terms

Albumen silver print Photography Architecture Documentary photography Built environment

Exhibitions

Nineteenth-Century Photographs from the Arnold H. Crane Collection

1979

Sixty Photographs: A Survey of Camera Esthetics

1940

Before Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography

1981

Photographs of the Civil War and the American Frontier

1942