The J. Paul Getty Museum

Valley of the Shadow of Death

Object Details

Title:

Valley of the Shadow of Death

Artist/Maker:

Roger Fenton (English, 1819 - 1869)

Culture:

English

Place:

Crimea, Ukraine (Place Created)

Date:

April 23, 1855

Medium:

Salted paper print

Object Number:

84.XM.504.23

Dimensions:

27.6 × 34.9 cm (10 7/8 × 13 3/4 in.)

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Object Description

...in coming to a ravine called the valley of death, the sight passed all imagination: round shot and shell lay like a stream at the bottom of the hollow all the way down, you could not walk without treading upon them...
--Roger Fenton

Fenton's most famous photograph is also one of the most well-known images of war. Across a desolate and featureless landscape, not a single figure can be found. The landscape is inhabited only by cannonballs--so plentiful that they first appear to be rocks--that stand in for the human casualties on the battlefield. The sense of emptiness and unease is heightened by the visual uncertainty created by the changing scale of the road and the sloping sides of the ravine.

Borrowing from the Twenty-third Psalm of the Bible, the Valley of Death was named by British soldiers who came under constant shelling there. Fenton traveled to the dangerous ravine twice, and on his second visit he made two exposures. Fenton wrote that he had intended to move in closer at the site. But danger forced him to retreat back up the road, where he created this image.

On a commissioned assignment, Fenton traveled in 1853 to the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea, where England, France, and Turkey were fighting a war against Russia. To avoid offending Victorian sensibilities, Fenton refrained from photographing the dead and wounded. His more than three hundred images of encampments, battle sites, and portraits of all miltary ranks, became the first extensive photo-documentation of any war. When exhibited in England, Fenton's photographs of the Crimean War established his reputation.

Provenance
Provenance
-1984

Samuel Wagstaff, Jr., American, 1921 - 1987, sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1984.

Exhibitions
Exhibitions
Experimental Photography: The First Golden Age 1851-1889 (April 11 to June 25, 1989)
  • The J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu), April 11 to June 25, 1989
Arrows of Time: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (January 24 to April 2, 1995)
  • Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center at UCLA (Los Angeles), January 24 to April 2, 1995
All the Mighty World: The Photographs of Roger Fenton, 1852-1860 (October 17, 2004 to January 2, 2006)
  • National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), October 17, 2004 to January 2, 2005
  • The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center (Los Angeles), February 1 to April 24, 2005
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), May 24 to August 21, 2005
  • Tate Britain (London), September 21, 2005 to January 2, 2006
Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography since the Sixties (June 29 to November 14, 2010)
  • The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center (Los Angeles), June 29 to November 14, 2010
A Royal Passion: Queen Victoria and Photography (February 4 to June 8, 2014)
  • The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center (Los Angeles), February 4 to June 8, 2014
The Thrill of the Chase: The Wagstaff Collection of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum (March 15, 2016 to May 7, 2017)
  • The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center (Los Angeles), March 15 to July 31, 2016
  • Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford), September 10 to December 11, 2016
  • Portland Museum of Art (Portland), February 13 to May 7, 2017
Bibliography
Bibliography

Corcoran Gallery of Art. A Book of Photographs from the Collection of Sam Wagstaff. (New York: Gray Press, 1978), p. 21.

Masterpieces of the J. Paul Getty Museum: Photographs (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1999), p. 21.

Martineau, Paul. The Thrill of the Chase: the Wagstaff collection of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2016), p. 67, pl. 18.

Edwards, Nina. Darkness: A Cultural History (London: Reaktion Books, 2018), p. 144, ill.