In the Crimea

In the confusion of the Crimean War, a bearded, solemn-eyed young Briton jogged along with the armies in a boxlike wagon marked "Photographic Van." He was Roger Fenton, the first war photographer in history, and he succeeded in catching the authentic mood of Crimea (see opposite page) with the same craftsman's touch that Mathew Brady displayed later in the U.S. Civil War. Last week many a Briton was discovering Fenton's genius in a photographic supplement of The Cornhill, literary quarterly founded by William Makepeace Thackeray.

Fenton carted his equipment ashore in the Crimea in March 1855, set about photographing the war by starting with the jumble of ships at the British harbor base of Cossack Bay, Balaklava. venton's slow, bulky camera could catch no British armies in action, but it could catch such mood shots as "A Quiet Day in the Mortar Battery," the shallow "Valley of Death," littered with cannonballs after the Charge of the Light Brigade, and the threatening magnificence of the proud syth Regiment drawn up on parade with its tents in the background. In the leisurely pace of the war, commanders had plenty of time to put up with Fenton's elaborate posing requirements. When he photographed General Sir George Brown, commander of the British Light Division, Fenton noted appreciatively: "He was very amiable, put on his uniform and a cocked hat and did just as I wished him."

Fenton's technical problems were horrendous. The dry-plate had yet to be invented and he had to coat his plates with sensitized solution, dash outside and expose them before they had time to dry. The developing water was "so hot that I can hardly bear my hands in it."

He had another problem that modern war photographers would understand: soldiers constantly badgered him to have their pictures taken. "If I refuse to take them," he complained, "I get no facilities for conveying my van from one locality to another."

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