In the confusion of the Crimean War, a bearded, solemn-eyed young Briton jogged along with the armies in a boxlike wagon marked "Photographic Van." He was Roger Fenton, the first war photographer in history, and he succeeded in catching the authentic mood of Crimea (see opposite page) with the same craftsman's touch that Mathew Brady displayed later in the U.S. Civil War. Last week many a Briton was discovering Fenton's genius in a photographic supplement of The Cornhill, literary quarterly founded by William Makepeace Thackeray.
Fenton carted his equipment ashore in the Crimea in March 1855, set about photographing the war by...
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