# The Valley of the Shadow of Death > Roger Fenton - 23 April 1855 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/roger-fenton/roger-fenton-valley-of-the-shadow-of-death/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-19 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Roger Fenton - **Date:** 23 April 1855 - **Medium:** Salted paper print from a wet collodion glass negative - **Dimensions:** Varies by surviving print, since prints were made individually from the negative and later trimmed and mounted by the publisher. Recorded examples: Library of Congress sheet 28 x 36 cm; J. Paul Getty Museum image 27.6 x 34.9 cm; Princeton University Art Museum sheet 26.6 x 35.1 cm, mount 35.4 x 46.6 cm; Victoria and Albert Museum 20.6 x 16.4 cm. The V&A figure is markedly smaller than the others and could not be reconciled from the sources consulted; see notes_for_editor. - **Object type:** Photograph - **Period:** British, mid-nineteenth century - **Current location:** No single print is 'the' object. Prints made from Fenton's negative are held by, among others, the Library of Congress, the Royal Collection Trust, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Musee d'Orsay, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Princeton University Art Museum. The Library of Congress copy (LCCN 2001698869) is used as the reference print for this record because it is fully catalogued, digitized and rights-cleared. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A dirt road through a ravine near Sevastopol, littered with Russian cannonballs, photographed by Roger Fenton on 23 April 1855 during the Crimean War. Fenton made two exposures from the same spot within minutes of each other: one with the road itself clear and the balls confined to the ditch beside it, one with balls scattered across the road. The second is the image everyone knows, and for over a century and a half it has been the subject of a genuine scholarly argument about whether Fenton, or an assistant, moved the ammunition into the road to make the picture more dramatic.In 2007 the documentary filmmaker Errol Morris spent months trying to settle the question and eventually did, using the position of loose stones on the slope above the road rather than anything about the cannonballs themselves. His conclusion, published in the New York Times, is that the empty-road version was taken first. What that proves about Fenton's intentions, and what it does not prove, is treated at length below.Prints survive in institutional collections on both sides of the Atlantic. The negative itself has not been traced to a known repository. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1855-04-23** Roger Fenton, on assignment for Thomas Agnew and Sons `[documented]` (creation) Two glass collodion negatives exposed from the same camera position in the Valley of the Shadow of Death near Sevastopol, during Fenton's second visit to the site that day, while the position was under Russian fire according to his own letters. Publication and sale rights belonged to his sponsor, Thomas Agnew and Sons, under the terms of the commission. - **1855-1856** Thomas Agnew and Sons, with co-publishers Colnaghi's and Williams and Co. `[documented]` (publication and exhibition) Exhibited among 312 Fenton photographs at the Water Colour Society's rooms, Pall Mall East, London, from 20 September 1855, and issued commercially as one of 337 mounted prints sold individually and in sets between November 1855 and 5 April 1856. Unsold stock, including negatives, was sold at auction by Agnew in 1856. - **1856-1862** Roger Fenton `[unknown]` (gap) The specific fate of this negative between the 1856 Agnew stock auction and Fenton's own 1862 retirement auction is not documented in the sources consulted. Fenton continued to work as a photographer through this period, including as the British Museum's first official photographer. - **1862** Unknown, via Fenton's 1862 retirement auction `[unknown]` (dispersal) In October 1862 Fenton retired from photography and put his equipment and remaining stock of negatives, reported at over a thousand plates, up for auction. No source consulted traces this specific negative through that sale or afterward; its present whereabouts, or destruction, is undocumented. - **-1944** Fenton family, latterly his grandniece Frances M. Fenton `[unknown]` (gap and private descent (print, not negative)) This entry concerns the print line, not the negative. The Library of Congress's 1944 purchase came from Fenton's grandniece, Frances M. Fenton, indicating a set of prints, described by the library as possibly Fenton's or Agnew's own working set, descended within the family from 1855 until the 1944 sale. The route of descent within that period is not documented in the sources consulted. - **1944-present** Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division `[documented]` (acquisition) Purchased in 1944 together with 262 other Fenton prints from Frances M. Fenton. Catalogued as LCCN 2001698869. Used as the reference print for this record. - **1855-present** Victoria and Albert Museum, museum number 64:856 `[documented]` (acquisition, separate print) Entered the V&A collection through the Townshend Bequest. The date the bequest was received, and the print's history between 1855 and that bequest, are not given in the museum's own online catalogue entry. - **-1984** Samuel Wagstaff `[unknown]` (private collection, separate print) The J. Paul Getty Museum's Fenton print carries an 84.XM accession prefix, which identifies the Museum's 1984 acquisition of Samuel Wagstaff's approximately 26,000-object photography collection, the founding acquisition of the Getty's Department of Photographs. This record infers the print's presence in the Wagstaff collection from the accession series; it has not independently verified an itemized Wagstaff provenance for this specific sheet. - **1950-present** Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (as part of the Gernsheim collection) `[documented]` (acquisition, separate corpus) Not a single print but a distinct line of descent: in 1950 the collector Helmut Gernsheim purchased what was described as Fenton's own complete set of 360 mounted Crimean prints from a Fenton descendant for 50 pounds. Gernsheim's collection, including this material, was later placed with the University of Texas. No source consulted establishes whether any specific institutional print discussed elsewhere in this record is drawn from this set. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **2023-04-27** Swann Auction Galleries, New York, Fine Photographs, featuring 100 works from the Stephen White Collection, sale 2634, lot 9 - Estimate: USD 20,000 - 30,000 - Hammer: USD 18,000 DERIVED, not published. Derived from the premium-inclusive 22,500 at the 25 per cent rate for hammer up to and including USD 100,000 printed in section 7 of the Conditions of Sale reproduced on the same lot page. The same page also shows a current site-wide schedule of 30 per cent, which would give 17,308 and is not an increment; the 25 per cent schedule is the one printed as the conditions of this sale, so 18,000 is carried. Label stays DERIVED. - With premium: USD 22,500 premium-inclusive. The house lot page prints 'Sold: $22,500.00' with the label '(Sold Price includes Buyer's Premium)'. - Lot page read 2026-09-14. Catalogue description: salted paper print, image 27 x 35.9 cm, mount 48.9 x 62.9 cm, with Fenton's letterpress credit, title, publisher's credit and publishing date on the mount recto, dated 23 April 1855. Provenance as printed by the house: Lee Gallery, Winchester, Massachusetts. This is a sale of one salted paper print among several known, not of a unique object; the record already says so. Second confirmation of the 22,500 figure: the secondary reports the record already cites, which agree to the dollar. ## Open questions - Where is the glass negative today, if it survives at all? No institution consulted for this record claims to hold it, and Fenton's remaining negative stock was dispersed at auction in 1862. - What is the individual acquisition history of most institutional prints before they entered their present collections? Only a handful (Library of Congress 1944, V&A Townshend Bequest, Getty 1984 Wagstaff acquisition, Princeton anonymous-gift purchase) have a documented route in the sources consulted; the rest are undocumented in what was available. - Did Fenton regard the second exposure as staging in any sense he would have considered dishonest, or as a legitimate illustrative choice consistent with the documentary conventions of 1855? The stone evidence fixes the sequence of the two exposures but is silent on intent, and scholars remain divided. - Which specific print corresponds to which version at institutions holding more than one Fenton print of this title, such as the Getty, where the sources consulted list two separate object records without specifying which shows the clear road and which shows the road with shot. - Is the Victoria and Albert Museum's recorded dimension of 20.6 by 16.4 centimetres for museum number 64:856 accurate for this title, given that it is far smaller and in a different aspect ratio than every other recorded print of the same negative? This could not be resolved from the sources consulted and may indicate a catalogue error, a cropped or reduced print, or a mismatched record. - Has this specific title achieved an auction price higher than the 22,500 US dollars recorded at Swann Galleries in April 2023? The search for this record was not exhaustive of every specialist photography sale since prints of this image first reached the market in the twentieth century. ## Sources - [1] Public Domain Review, 'Of Chickens, Eggs, and Cannonballs: Roger Fenton's Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855)'. - [2] Wikipedia, 'Valley of the Shadow of Death (Roger Fenton)'. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with Ulrich Keller's published monograph and the Musee d'Orsay's own catalogue essay. - [3] Tate Etc, issue 5, 'A terrible beauty: Roger Fenton'. - [4] Wikimedia Commons file metadata for File:The valley of the shadow of death LCCN2001698869.jpg, sourced to the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division catalog record LCCN 2001698869. - [5] Princeton University Art Museum, catalogue entry for 'Valley of the Shadow of Death', object x1991-193. - [6] Princeton University Art Museum catalogue entry (publication credit line: Thomas Agnew and Sons, Colnaghi's, and Williams and Co.), same record as source 5. - [7] HistoryNet, 'In the Valley of the Shadow of Death: Roger Fenton's Crimean War Photos'. - [8] Harry Ransom Center Magazine (University of Texas at Austin), 'Fighting Heat, Dust, and Glare: Roger Fenton and the first photographic documentation during the Crimean War'. - [9] PetaPixel, 'Famous Valley Of The Shadow Of Death Photo Was Almost Certainly Staged', reporting Errol Morris's and Dennis Purcell's rock-shadow analysis and its conclusion, with reference to Morris's original New York Times essays. - [10] Errol Morris, 'Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?', New York Times Opinionator, Part One, 25 September 2007; later expanded as the opening chapter of Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography (Penguin Press, 2011). Cited via its confirmed URL and via secondary accounts (sources 1, 2, 9) that describe its content and dates in detail; the original was not directly retrievable for this record. Flagged for direct verification against the original essay and book chapter. - [11] Wikipedia, 'Roger Fenton', for biographical facts cross-checked against source 16 where possible. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography such as Hannavy's 'Roger Fenton of Crimble Hall'. - [12] Library of Congress, background note on the Fenton Crimean War Photographs collection, describing the September 1855 exhibition and the 1855-56 Agnew publication program including the eleven-part Sebastopol panorama and eight-part Balaklava/Inkerman panorama. - [13] Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, 'Valley of the Shadow of Death', museum number 64:856. - [14] Reporting on Fenton's October 1862 retirement from photography and the auction of his equipment and negative stock, cross-checked across MilitaryHistoryNow ('War Through a Lens - Roger Fenton and the Birth of Battlefield Photography') and Amateur Photographer ('Roger Fenton - Iconic Photographer'). - [15] Public Domain Image Archive, catalogue entry for 'Valley of the Shadow of Death (1st version)', Art Institute of Chicago source print, explicitly labeled as the first (clear-road) of the two exposures. - [16] Biographical summary of Roger Fenton (birth at Crimble Hall, University College London, Paris training under Delaroche, call to the Bar 1851, founding of the Photographic Society of London in 1853), cross-checked across the Royal Collection Trust's Fenton biography page and Wikipedia. - [17] Reporting on the Library of Congress's 1944 purchase of 263 Fenton prints, including Valley of the Shadow of Death, from his grandniece Frances M. Fenton, describing the set as possibly reflecting an arrangement kept by Fenton or Agnew. - [18] Getty Iris (J. Paul Getty Museum blog), 'Finding Beauty in Unexpected Places: The Wagstaff Collection of Photographs', on the Museum's 1984 acquisition of Samuel Wagstaff's photography collection and its 84.XM accession series. - [19] Reporting on Helmut Gernsheim's 1950 purchase of Fenton's complete set of 360 mounted Crimean prints for 50 pounds and its eventual placement with the University of Texas, cross-checked across the Harry Ransom Center Magazine (source 8) and general reporting on the Gernsheim collection. - [20] Reporting on the sale of a salted paper print of Valley of the Shadow of Death at Swann Auction Galleries, New York, 27 April 2023, Fine Photographs sale featuring the Stephen White Collection, estimate USD 20,000-30,000, reported price USD 22,500. Swann's own lot page returned an access error when fetched directly for this record and should be checked directly for the hammer/premium breakdown. - [21] Swann Auction Galleries, 'Lot 9, Roger Fenton (1819-1869), Valley of the Shadow of Death - Fine Photographs / Stephen White Collection, sale 2634, 27 April 2023'. Sale, lot, estimate, premium-inclusive price, the house's own label that the price includes the buyer's premium, the premium schedule for this sale, and the printed provenance. Accessed 2026-09-14. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.