Chartres Cathedral—North Porch

Frederick H. Evans painstakingly planned his images of cathedral interiors and printed them equally carefully, on platinum paper that maximized the rich range of grays. The photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz devoted an issue of his deluxe journal Camera Work to Evans’s oeuvre, writing that “of the thousands who have photographed cathedrals, none has imbued his pictures with such poetic qualities coupled with such masterful treatment.” Evans considered his photographs individual works of art at a moment when they were not yet entirely accepted as such, emphasizing that status further by carefully mounting or framing them. Here he surrounded his image of Chartres Cathedral with a hand-drawn border.