I recently heard a radio interview on Radio4 with Simon Grant of the TATE who was talking about the photography of Roger Fenton, who with his studies of the Crimean war gained much noteriety for his studies of the terrible beauty of war.
Roger Fenton arrived in Balaklava harbour on a cool spring day on 8 March 1855. Sent out by the commercial firm of Thomas Agnews & Co to take photographs of the Crimean War, he brought with him a large white horse-drawn van, which had been converted from a wine merchant's vehicle into a mobile darkroom. It had everything he needed - five large cameras, 700 glass plates stacked in wooden boxes, several chests of chemicals, printing frames, as well as his personal supply of preserved meats, wine, beer, biscuits and horse tackle.
A trained painter and the wealthy son of a Lancashire MP, Fenton had turned his interests to the relatively new technology of photography and learned quickly. He exhibited his first photographs in 1852, co-founded the Photographic Society a year later and by the time he arrived in the Crimea had already received much valuable patronage from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
It is a picture of a contaminated landscape - a more reflective alternative amid the clamour of imagery that we are now fed by television news.
A trained painter and the wealthy son of a Lancashire MP, Fenton had turned his interests to the relatively new technology of photography and learned quickly. He exhibited his first photographs in 1852, co-founded the Photographic Society a year later and by the time he arrived in the Crimea had already received much valuable patronage from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
