Frederick H. Evans, 1853-1943

Platinum Print, mounted on card, titled on the mount below image, the photographer's 'FHE' blindstamp also on the mount, inscribed 'A Sea of Steps/Stairs to Chapter House/Wells Cathedral/By/Frederick H Evans' in ink and annotated 'W5' in pencil on the reverse, 

For prints of this image in major collections, see:
V. Deren Coke (ed.), 1975, pl. 30 (Collection of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.)
P. Roberts 2001, p. 295 (The Royal Photographic Society Collection/National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford).
M. Warner Marien 2002, pl. 4.19 (Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York).

ONE OF THE GREATEST IMAGES EVER CREATED BY MEANS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

'The beautiful curve of the steps on the right is for all the world like the surge of great wave that will presently break and subside into smaller ones like those at the top of the picture. It is one of my most imaginative lines it has been my good fortune to try and depict, this superb mounting of the steps...'
(Frederick H. Evans, 1903, quoted in M. Harker 1979, p. 97)

'Try for a record of emotion rather than a piece of topography. Wait till the building makes you feel intensely, in some special part of it or other: then try and analyse what gives you that feeling, see if it is due to the isolation of some particular aspect or effect, and then see what your camera can do towards reproducing that effect, that subject. Try and try again, until you find that your print shall give not only yourself, but others who have not your own intimate knowledge of the original, some measure of the feeling it originally inspired in you...'
(Frederick H. Evans, quoted in B. Newhall 1973, p. 11 )

The 'Sea of Steps' is a true icon of photography. Reproduced again and again in the half-century since the history of photography began to be written, the composition has lost none of its power to delight the eye. It is a classic work of 'pure photography'.

The meaning of pure photography (images that are not manipulated in the darkroom or by the retoucher) has been distorted over time. The term was co-opted by those who sought to identify modernism as the most significant aesthetic movement of the early twentieth century. However, as the quote above from Evans demonstrates, the radical compositional design (produced using a tele-photo lens) was not to be privileged at the expense of meaning. Instead, it was the means by which 'the spiritual harmonies of architecture' were to be evoked. 

With such a subject as this, taken by a Victorian, it can hardly be doubted that biblical symbolism and philosophical and poetic references were in the forefront of the photographer's mind while arranging his composition, and making and mounting this print. For a detailed analysis of Evans' aesthetic in relation to philosophical and religious thought, see A.K. Hammond's article in M. Weaver (ed.) 1989, pp. 243-259.   

This particular print is mounted to Evans' own exacting specifications. According to Margaret Harker, when in 1901 Evans became 'Hangman in Chief' to the Salon exhibitions, 'he set an example in his own work by tasteful selection of mounting material which enhanced the appearance of photographic imagery. He selected muted greys and duns which complemented rather than detracted from the delicate tone ranges of platinotypes (his favourite print process). He introduced the added design feature of underlays in the form of borders in at least one different tone from the master mount. He had a superb sense of design and the proportions of image to mount were always right...' (1979, p.108).  

THE FIRST TIME IN OVER TWENTY YEARS THAT A PLATINUM PRINT OF THE 'SEA OF STEPS' HAS COME ONTO THE INTERNATIONAL AUCTION MARKET