Landing Place, Ordnance Wharf, Balaklava

Roger Fenton

1855 · Salted paper print from glass negative · Photographs

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.

Artist

Roger Fenton

Date

1855

Medium

Salted paper print from glass negative

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gilman Collection, Purchase, Joseph M. Cohen Gift, 2005