This book tells the story of how the medium of photography was embraced by the V&A, a new kind of museum that concerned itself with the arts of everyday life and with a large popular audience. Henry Cole, founder of the V&A, began to collect photography as an art form in 1856 and hosted an international exhibition of photographs in 1858.

He bought and exhibited the works of pioneering Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, whose letters to Cole are among the many illuminating documents published here for the first time.

The V&A's Victorian holdings are outstanding, with major photographs by Roger Fenton, David Octavius Hill, Robert Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Gustave Le Gray, Camille Silvy, and Lady Hawarden. In recent years, the museum has acquired significant works by such twentieth-century masters as Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Paul Strand, and Cecil Beaton.