Landing Place, Ordnance Wharf, Balaklava

Roger Fenton British

Not on view

The Crimean War (1853-56) pitted European nations against an expansionist Russia and was the first large-scale conflict documented by photography. In 1855 a Manchester publisher commissioned Fenton to travel to the Crimea to record the theater of war in photographs to be sold by subscription. The images were intended to reassure the British at home, alarmed by reports of a harsh winter, squalid conditions, outbreaks of cholera, and inadequacies in leadership, that their troops were not suffering undue hardship. This view of Balaklava, the narrow harbor used as a landing place by the British, shows the chaotic disruption that modern warfare imposed on a formerly placid fishing village.

Landing Place, Ordnance Wharf, Balaklava, Roger Fenton (British, 1819–1869), Salted paper print from glass negative

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Landing Place, Ordnance Wharf, Balaklava, Roger Fenton (British, 1819–1869), Salted paper print from glass negative
Landing Place, Ordnance Wharf, Balaklava, Roger Fenton (British, 1819–1869), Salted paper print from glass negative

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