Art, Reproduction and Reportage: Roger Fenton’s Crimean Photographs

ExtractSophie Gordon Despite the acknowledgement of Roger Fenton (1819–69) as a significant Victorian artistic photographer, the photographs he took in 1855 during the Crimean War have been described as ‘propaganda’ intended to ‘counteract the negative depiction of the campaign in The Times’. With Fenton considered a Government stooge, it is, perhaps, not surprising that historians of photography have found the Crimean photographs difficult to incorporate into Fenton’s story. Noted authorities on Fenton have suggested that Prince Albert (1819–61) may have had a role in commissioning the photographs or that the publisher Thomas Agnew and Sons was instructed to send a photographer to the Crimea to produce images intended to counteract the contemporary criticism of the war. A careful study of the visual sources as well as letters written by Roger Fenton, however, provides clear evidence that Agnew and Sons provided Fenton with a very specific commercial and artistic brief: to...