Sebastopol from Cathcart's Hill

Roger Fenton’s images from the Crimean War represent the earliest attempt to photograph a military conflict; the English public devoured the visual records, reproduced as engravings and published in newspapers, from the comfort of their drawing rooms. Fenton spent the spring of 1855 in the Crimea under extremely trying conditions, making about 350 pictures over the course of three and a half months. Scenes of active battle were impossible to capture given the limitations of photographic technology at the time, and Fenton also restrained from portraying the bodies of dead soldiers. Instead he focused on the harsh scenery, life in the camp, and officers in the British Army. This image of a desolate campground comes from an album that Fenton published upon his return.