FENTON, ROGER

born 1819, Heywood, near Rochdale, Lancashire, Eng. died Aug. 8, 1869, London English photographer best known for his pictures of the Crimean War, which were the first extensive photographic documents of a war. Fenton's reputation as a photographer was first made through his high-quality still lifes and his landscapes, which were extremely popular types of pictures during Victorian times. In the winter of 1855 Fenton was sent to the Crimea as the British government's official photographer. His governmental connections as the founder (1853) and first honorary secretary of the (Royal) Photographic Society of London helped him gain this appointment. Fenton and his assistant, Marcus Sparling, arrived on the ship Hecla and set up their darkroom in a wagon. Using the wet-collodion photographic process of the times, they took approximately 360 photographs of the war. Fenton and Sparling were agents of the government, however, and their vision was tainted by a glorified overview that saw only the acceptable parts of the war. The charge of the Light Brigade, for example, was one disaster that was favourably portrayed. Little of the real action or agony of war was shown. Upon his return to England, Fenton's work was successfully exhibited in London and Paris, and wood engravings of the particularly notable photographs were printed in the Illustrated London News. Fenton's work on the Crimean War is regarded as a flawed but valuable documentary record of that event.