(BRITISH, 1819 - 1869)

Roger Fenton was England’s most celebrated photographer during the 1850s. During a decade of work he mastered every photographic genre he attempted: architectural photography, landscape, portraiture, still life, reportage, and tableau vivant. His photographs combine the clarity of a newly modern world with the poetry of a Romantic sensibility. In 1855 he was commissioned to document the Crimean War, a labor intensive ordeal as well as a major moment in the history of documentary and war photography. His haunting images of Balaklava are some of the most important pieces of photographic documentation of the 19th century.