The Elliott & Fry photography studio was founded in 1863 by Joseph John Elliott (1835-1903) and Clarence Edmund Fry (1840-1897). For nearly a century the company was one of the foremost prestigious portrait studios in England, photographing celebrities, politicians, artists, and luminaries, as well as everyday people. Among their subjects were known British figures such as Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Rudyard Kipling, and Mabel Alice Attwell, and non-British notable figures such as D.H. Lawrence and the American sharpshooter Annie Oakley, among countless others. The studio was also known for images of Victorian life. In addition to three studios and four storage facilities for keeping negatives, they opened Elliott & Fry's Photographic Galleries to display their work.

During World War II bombing detroyed the Elliott & Fry studios and the majority of their negatives. The remaining negative are now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery of London. The studio continued until 1962 when it was absorbed by the studio of Alexander Bassano.