Moscow, Domes of Churches in the Kremlin 1852 Roger Fenton British In August 1852, Fenton set out for Russia at the invitation of his friend, the engineer Charles Vignoles, to photograph a suspension bridge that Vignoles was building for Czar Nicholas I across the Dnieper River near Kiev. With little experience but with obvious proficiency in Gustave Le Gray's "waxed paper" negative process, Fenton saw no reason to limit himself to that appointed task. When he returned to London in late November, his portfolio was filled with photographs of landmarks in Kiev, Saint Petersburg, and Moscow, the first photographs of Russia to be seen by the British public and the first ones by Roger Fenton.Since its victory over Napoleon, Russia was viewed as the rising power of nineteenth-century Europe. Foreigners knew little of the immense empire outside of its capital, the thoroughly Western Saint Petersburg. But Moscow, with its multitude of gilded domes and the profile of its Kremlin towers, was an