Francis Frith - Bideford. Albumen print, Getty Museum. Public domain photograph.

Francis Frith (1822-1898) was a British photographer and founder of the photographic publishing house Francis Frith & Co. He is best known for his extensive documentation of the Middle East, particularly Egypt, in the mid-19th century. Frith began his career as a successful businessman in the grocery trade, but after a trip to Egypt in 1856, he became fascinated with photography and began taking pictures of the country's ancient ruins and landscapes. He returned to Egypt several times over the next decade and amassed a collection of more than 3,000 photographs. In 1859, Frith founded his own photographic publishing company, which specialised in producing high-quality prints of his photographs of the Middle East. The company became one of the most successful of its kind in the Victorian era, and Frith's images helped popularise Egypt and the Middle East as tourist destinations. Today, his photographs are considered important historical documents and are held in collections around the world.