More War.

Roger Fenton was most likely the first war photographer.


Roger Fenton self portrait.

Along with his assistant Marcus Sparling, their documentation of the Crimean War predated the American Civil War by about 7 years. Fenton had set up their dark room in a wagon and took about 360 photos using the wet plate collodion process. Instead of showing a lot of the action of war, Fenton concentrated more on the mundane. Due to his involvement with the government he chose to show only the “acceptable” parts of the conflict, even his account of the Charge of the Light Brigade (also a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson) was put in a heroic and glorious account.





Fenton was able to return to London and actually exhibit some of his work. The more noted photographs were turned into wood engravings and printed in the Illustrated London News. After the war, Fenton kept up with architectural and landscape photography until his retirement from the field in 1862 when he decided to to return to practicing law.

Dr. Robert Leggat article about war photography.