Let’s Talk about Alice exhibition

Alice Seeley, adopted daughter of Frome, helped bring down a King – with a camera.

In 1898, twenty-seven-year-old Alice Seeley Harris sailed for King Leopold II’s Congo Free State. Over the next seven years, her photographs of forced rubber labour, mutilated workers, and a father named Nsala mourning his murdered daughter on the veranda of her mission station, shocked the world. They became the visual evidence behind what historians now recognise as the first photographic human-rights campaign – predating the better-known American documentary work of Lewis Hine by several years.

Her images, projected in lantern-slide lectures across Britain and the United States, helped force Leopold to cede the Congo in 1908. Then, Alice was largely written out of her own story. Even Mark Twain, who shared her most famous photograph in his 1905 satirical pamphlet King Leopold’s Soliloquy, did not write her name.

This summer, Photo|Frome and Frome Museum bring Alice’s work home. We follow Alice’s journey from Merchants Barton to the Maringa River and back. We explore the role of missionaries, humanitarian photography and the recognition of women – and we ask what her photographs still demand of us in 2026. The exhibition is built with care for visitors of all ages: an outer ring of display panels tells Alice’s story, while an inner ring displays Alice’s photographic evidence of human rights abuse, for those who choose to see it.

Opening hours
The Exhibition runs from 30 June to 22 August at Frome Museum. Opening hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 3pm, plus Independent Market Sundays.

Entry is free.

Some of the photographs in the exhibition’s inner ring may be distressing.