A PIONEER'S PAINTERLY PHOTOGRAPHY.

Byline: Lori Moody Daily News Staff Writer

Nineteenth-century British photographer Roger Fenton was best-known for his pictures of the Crimean War, but it was the exotic Near East that captured his imagination.

It was viewed at the time as ``an alien and attractive culture, mysterious, seen as being luxurious and, by Western standards, perhaps a little decadent,'' said Gordon Baldwin, associate curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu.

The Getty is exhibiting photographs Fenton staged in his London studio that viewers thought were accurate representations of domestic life in the Muslim world.

``Roger Fenton: The Orientalist Suite,'' which runs through Oct. 8, features 34 photographs by Fenton and related images by six other Victorian photographers, including Francis Frith and James Robertson.

The photographs tapped into the cultural biases of the time. Some of the images include barefoot women in subservient poses, kneeling at a man's feet or lighting his pipe. Others are in elaborate, revealing costumes, striking unfamiliar postures.

``No one seemed to tackle the subject that these photographs could not have been taken in the Near East,'' Baldwin said.

Cultural prohibitions would have prevented such scenes from being shot. For instance, harems were forbidden to Westerners, and women in general lived a cloistered life during that time, he explained.

Fenton, who died in 1869 at age 50, was considered the most important British photographer of the 19th century, Baldwin said.

He was best-known for landscapes, architecture studies and shooting the battlefields of the Crimean War. He also was a founder of the Photographic Society, later renamed the Royal Photographic Society, which still exists.

Fenton made the ``Orientalist Suite'' images in his London studio in 1858 using friends and a professional female model. The imagined scenes were based on his exposure to Orientalist art, his early experiences studying painting, his trip to the Crimea when Britain, France and Turkey were fighting against Russia, as well as the cultural stereotypes of the time.

Fenton wanted the photographs to be more like traditional art and worked at the lighting and props, Baldwin said. He modeled them after storytelling ``genre'' paintings in which viewers tried to figure out the story through the settings, costumes, gestures and expressions.

``He thought that one way that photography could be more like art was (to) take up the subjects of art,'' Baldwin said.

Fenton ultimately created 51 images.

``It's a remarkable technical achievement given the limitations of the medium of his day, to seem to capture motion, to seem to capture the life of another place,'' Baldwin said.

In ``Pasha and Bayadere,'' a photograph of an overlord and dancer, Fenton attached wires from the woman's wrists to the ceiling, which allowed her to pose with her hands over her head while dangling finger cymbals during the length of time it took to get an exposure.

Fenton gave up photography in 1862, selling his cameras and negatives and returning to the practice of law. Little exists from Fenton in the way of writings or other documentation to explain what motivated him to quit, but some speculate it was because of financial considerations.

``It is sort of mysterious,'' Baldwin said.

THE FACTS What: ``Roger Fenton: The Orientalist Suite.''

Where: J. Paul Getty Museum, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu.

When: Through Oct. 8.

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

Admission: Admission and parking are free, but parking reservations are required.

Information: [phone].

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: In ``Pasha and Bayadere'' and other images at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, Roger Fenton adapted photography to the sort of mythic, storytelling scenes depicted in genre paintings.