Charles Frederick Inston

Charles Frederick Inston (1855–1917) was a British pictorialist photographer. He was elected a member of the Royal Photographic Society in 1896 and Fellow in 1901 and was organiser of the Northern Photographic Exhibition from 1904. He became Secretary then President of the Liverpool Amateur Photographic Society.

Personal life Inston was born in Birmingham in October 1855. His parents were Joseph and Jane (née Barnes) Instone. He had a general and lithographic printing business in central Liverpool from at least 1879. He was a freemason with membership of the Kirkdale Lodge. In 1881 he married.

He experienced ill health for several years in later life and died on 4 May 1917.

Career as a photographer Inston photographed nature, especially landscapes and seascapes as well as genre pictures in towns, particularly Liverpool. He used a hand-held camera and sometimes asked people to pose in his photographs.

He exhibited at the Royal Photographic Society in 1896, 1900, 1902 and 1906, and was elected as a member in 1896 and fellow in 1901. He was a member of the committee for selecting works for the society's exhibitions 1908 - 1912 and council 1912 - 1917. He instigate the society's Northern Photographic Exhibition in 1904, first held in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and then in Manchester and Leeds, inviting fellow council member Frank Sutcliffe as a judge for the 1906 Northern Exhibition in Manchester. He became secretary of the Liverpool Amateur Photographic Association in 1909 and was president in 1912 - 1913. Musée Nicéphore-Niépce museum of photography, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Royal Photographic Society Collection.

There was a retrospective exhibition of some of his surviving work at the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool in 1979.