Views of Luxembourg and the ‘Orient’ Francis Frith and Victorian Photography

In 1880, a photo collection, which showed 11 views of Luxembourg City and its low town taken in three different formats, was published by the bookshop Pierre Brück. The newspaper Luxemburger Wort pointed out in an article on 13th March 1880 that the collection showed “some of the most beautiful spots of the city”. Francis Frith & Co, a photographic company named after its renowned founder and Victorian photographer Francis Frith, took these photos. Predicting the growth of tourism, Frith set out to photograph every city, town and landscape in Britain. He further developed his clever commercial idea by commissioning photographers to go to the four corners of the globe.

Through Frith’s essays and quotes, we discover in our exhibition the photographer’s concept, the difficulties presented by the new medium and the context in which the exhibited images were produced.

• Francis Frith. A Victorian Photographer in the ‘Orient’ (Nadine Abel-Esslingen)
• Travels with a Camera: Contexts of Nineteenth-Century Photography (Martin Barnes)
• Photos of the book Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia.
• “The production of his views will encourage foreigners to visit our country” On a photocollection about Luxembourg from 1880 (Claude D. Conter)
• Francis Frith 1822-1898 and F. Frith & Co. (Julia Skinner)
• Photos of the unpublished album Luxembourg