National Media Museum blog
From Bradford UNESCO City of Film, we write about photography, film and television, and daily life in a national museum.
Saved for the Nation: Pasha and Bayadère by Roger Fenton
One of the joys of working for the National Media Museum is that I spend my day surrounded by experts with fascinating stories to tell. During a recent conversation with Colin Harding, Curator of Photographic Technology, he told me the story behind one of Roger Fenton’s masterpieces – Pasha and Bayadère.
Pasha and Bayadère, 1858. Roger Fenton. National Media Museum Collection
Until recently it was believed that there was only one print of the Pasha and Bayadère image by Roger Fenton in existence and it was in the hands of the Getty Institute in Los Angeles.
Then another was discovered in the UK, but it was sold at auction in 2010 to a private buyer in the USA. We objected to its export, believing that it should stay in the country, it being one of the finest examples of Fenton’s orientalist studies. Our staff then worked tirelessly to raise the money to buy the print for the National Photography Collection and, with the help of The Art Fund, was successful.
Roger Fenton is one of the most important and highly-regarded British photographers of the nineteenth century. He is best known for his photographs of the Crimean War but during a photographic career which only lasted just over a decade he mastered every genre which he attempted.
A hugely influential figure, Fenton was a founder member and first Secretary of the Photographic Society (later The Royal Photographic Society) in 1853.
The photograph shows Roger Fenton as a pasha, an Ottoman official, watching a Bayadère or dancing girl. On the left of the photograph sits one of Fenton’s friends, the artist Frank Dillon. This print has been passed down through Dillon’s family.
For Victorian England this would have been quite a racy image. Many were fascinated by the mystery and exoticism of the East yet it would not have been acceptable for a British woman to have been photographed in this manner.
However, all is not what it seems. Fenton visited Constantinople on his travels yet this is not one of his documentary photographs – it was staged in his studio in London.
Just prior to the photograph being taken Frank Dillon had come back from a journey on the Nile and had brought back exotic (for the time) looking costumes and objects. The image looks like a snapshot of a relaxed scene yet if you look very closely you may be able to see strings attached to the dancing girl’s wrists. The exposure time would have been so long that the model’s arms would have begun to ache so it was necessary to prop her up.
Pasha and Bayadère is part of our exhibition In the Blink of an Eye: Media and Movement because it illustrates the difficulties of capturing movement in early photography. This is the first time this image has been on display at the Museum and we’re really proud to have saved it for the nation.
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