The Shadow of War: Roger Fenton’s Photographs of the Crimea 1855


Interesting exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery of Roger Fenton’s photographs of the Crimean War.

Fenton was the first photographer to document a war for public consumption. He was only at the front for four month of a two year campaign but the photographs had a lasting effect and toured the UK in over 25 exhibitions. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert bought a set of 349 the pictures for the Prince of Wales who later added to the collection.

The show included a good description of why the war was fought which I’d never quite understood and it stood in weird contrast to the Royalty and the Romanovs exhibition which had highlighted the close relationship between the families at the time so it seemed strange that Britain was at war with Russia for part of that time.

The pictures were a range of portraits of the main commanders, scenes of the countryside begin fought over and military life in camp. There is some controversy that Fenton dressed some of the scenes after battles bringing in extra cannon balls. The show also included Thomas Barker’s painting of the Battle of Sebastopol based on some of Fenton’s photographs with a key to the photos used.

The last room looked at how Victoria and Albert expressed their concern for the soldiers involved in the war and met many of them, commissioning photographs of those they spoke to.

Closes on 28 April 2019

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