About this artwork
Prominent in photographic circles and favored by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Roger Fenton was commissioned to document the British military during the Crimean War; his pictures there represent one of the first uses of photography in wartime. He spent March through June 1855 with the troops, producing 360 wet-plate glass negatives in his horse-drawn darkroom. The laborious process and lengthy exposure times precluded photographs of battle, yet Fenton captured the psychological intensity of war in pictures such as The Valley of the Shadow of Death. A superficial sense of barren calm is belied by the numerous Russian cannonballs, which cover the ground to indicate past violence and suggest imminent future danger in the area. Fenton exhibited this and related images in London in the fall of 1855, provoking enormous public interest, and he published them in portfolio editions.
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Status
- Currently Off View
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Department
- Photography and Media
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Artist
- Roger Fenton
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Title
- The Valley of the Shadow of Death
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Place
- England (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- Made 1855
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Medium
- Salted paper print, from the album "Photographic Pictures of the Seat of War in the Crimea" (1856)
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Inscriptions
- Printed recto, on mount, lower left, in black ink: "Deposé"; recto, on mount, lower right, in black ink: "The Valley of the Shadow of Death."; recto, on mount, along bottom edge, in black ink: "No. 218. Photographed by R. Fenton. Manchester, Published by T. Agnew & Sons, Jan'y 1st 1856. / London, P. & D. Colnaghi H[?] Paris, Moulin, 23, Rue Richer. New York, Williams H[?]"; unmarked verso
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Dimensions
- Image/paper: 27.2 × 36.4 cm (10 3/4 × 14 3/8 in.); Mount: 42.1 × 52.8 cm (16 5/8 × 20 13/16 in.)
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Credit Line
- Photography Gallery Fund
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Reference Number
- 1959.611.17
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IIIF Manifest
- https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/123407/manifest.json
Extended information about this artwork
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.