Roger Fenton Biography
Roger Fenton was born in 1819 and was initially a painter, but has been passionate about photography since its invention. He studied in Paris at the atelier of Paul Delaroche between 1841 and 1851, where he met the photographer Gustave Le Gray with whom he collaborated. He probably learned the processes of the daguerreotype and calotype, as he devoted himself to the latter when he returned to London. In 1847 he co-founded the Photographic Club with other photographers, whose interests reflected their belief that photography could also be a means of artistic expression.
Initially, Fenton devoted himself to landscape and still life, as was fashionable at the time. But he soon became famous for his architectural photographs. In 1852, together with a friend, he went to Russia and visited Kiev, St. Petersburg and Moscow. The photographs he took on this trip, using Gustave Le Gray's paraffin negative process, were among the finest he has ever taken. On his return to London, some of these photographs were exhibited at the Royal Society of Arts and Fenton's reputation as a photographer was quickly secured.
In 1853, Fenton was elected secretary of the newly formed Photographic Society, and in 1854 he became director of the photographic section of the British Museum. In 1855, at the suggestion of the royal family, he traveled to the Crimea to take photographs of the war taking place there, which ultimately were the first photographically documented. Fenton's photos, despite having a rich and refined atmosphere, tend to illustrate war as an exciting game without highlighting the deadly aspects.
Fenton arrived at Balaklava on 8 March 1855 with everything he needed, including a vintner's wagon adapted as a darkroom, numerous crates of the chemicals needed for the wet collodion process, five portrait and landscape cameras, and 700 plates of glass of various sizes. Although the 360 plates he brought back to England were mainly portraits and landscapes, Fenton was not insensitive to the horrors he saw around him, as evidenced by the letters he wrote to his wife and publisher.
However, only one photograph by Fenton reveals the brutality of the conflict: that of a field full of cannonballs, at the end of a battle in the "Valley of the Shadow of Death". Just when his fame was at its peak, Fenton decided to abandon the photographic activity and in 1862 he auctioned off all his equipment and photos, probably disappointed by the commercialization of photography and the technical problems that affected him.
