#roger fenton

[charnel-grounds]

Roger Fenton (1819–1869), “A Memento of Furness Abbey, 1856”

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[joeinct]

Portrait of a young woman with a letter, Photo attributed to Roger Fenton (British, 1819–1869), c. 1856

[theinternetarchive]

'melrose abbey,' medium salt print from a collodion negative, roger fenton, 1856.

[semioticapocalypse]

Roger Fenton. Orientalist Group (detail). 1858

I Am Collective Memories   •    Follow me, — says Visual Ratatosk

[gleamingvessel]

Roger Fenton, Roslin Chapel, South Porch, 1856

[clove-pinks]

Self-portrait by photographer Roger Fenton, 1852. Albumen silver print from glass negative.

[fromthedust]

Roger Fenton (English, 1819-1869)

The Valley of the Shadow of Death - The Crimean War - April 23, 1855

" . . . in coming to a ravine called the valley of death, the sight passed all imagination: round shot and shell lay like a stream at the bottom of the hollow all the way down, you could not walk without treading upon them . . ." ~ Roger Fenton

Borrowing from the Twenty-third Psalm of the Bible, the Valley of Death was named by British soldiers who came under constant shelling there. Fenton traveled to the dangerous ravine twice, and on his second visit he made two exposures. Fenton wrote that he had intended to move in closer at the site. But danger forced him to retreat back up the road, where he created this image.

On a commissioned assignment, Fenton traveled in 1853 to the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea, where England, France, and Turkey were fighting a war against Russia. To avoid offending Victorian sensibilities, Fenton refrained from photographing the dead and wounded. His more than three hundred images of encampments, battle sites, and portraits of all military ranks, became the first extensive photo-documentation of any war.

The Crimean War was a conflict fought from October 1853 to February 1856, primarily between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, Britain, and Sardinia-Piedmont. The war stemmed from a complex mix of religious disputes, imperial rivalries, and the weakening Ottoman Empire. It ended with Russia's defeat and a redrawing of the European balance of power. 

[gacougnol]

Roger Fenton (English, 1819-1869)

Cedars Monmouthshire

October 1857