Frederick Henry Evans 1853-1943 began experimenting with photography in the mid-1880s while running a bookshop in Cheapside, London. He became a member of the British Linked Ring society of photographers in 1900 or 1901 and was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1928. Evans was the first British photographer whose work Alfred Stieglitz published in Camera Work, his influential journal of photography. Like his friend and fellow bookseller Fred Holland Day, Evans preferred the results achieved with the platinum print; and, like Day, he gave up photography after World War I when the precious metal became prohibitively expensive and was eventually no longer available for photographic purposes. A purist, he believed in never altering a photographic image after exposing the film. His goal was to create an aesthetically and spiritually satisfying image, utilizing the play of light and shadow on static architectural structures. He did not try to capture spontaneous moments. His advice was largely ignored by younger photographers, and he spent the last years of his life virtually forgotten, privately publishing limited editions of platinotype editions of his collection of drawings by artists such as Beardsley.
He ultimately became regarded as perhaps the finest architectural photographer of his, or any, era.