Photograph showing Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire. Russell Sedgfield was born in Devizes, Wiltshire, and trained as an engineer. His interest in photography began at the age of 16 when he took out a licence, as an amateur, to operate the calotype process, invented by W. H. Fox Talbot. From this early beginning he became a leading topographic photographer c.1852-72. A view of Stonehenge by Sedgfield, on waxed paper, was shown in 1854 at the first Photographic Society exhibition, held in Suffolk Street in London. The photograph is signed and dated in the negative, 'E. Sedgfield [sic] 1853'.