Isabel Cowper

Isabel Agnes Cowper, a British wood-engraver and photographer, was the first female Official Museum Photographer at the South Kensington Museum and possibly the first female Official Museum Photographer ever. From 1868, when Cowper assumed the role at the museum, to her retirement in 1891, Cowper made thousands of photographs documenting the museum and loan objects and the construction of the museum buildings. In her lifetime, Cowper's photographs were widely circulated as illustrations in South Kensington Museum publications and examples of her work are continually being discovered in libraries and archives around the world.