Summary of Errol Morris's quest to identify which of Roger Fenton's photographs of the Valley of the Shadow of Death came first.

1. The Historical Thinking Process
Identification and analysis through the
Crimean War photographs of Roger
Fenton
History 390-003, The Digital Past, Week Three, spring 2014, Lee Ann Cafferata, George Mason University

2. Roger Fenton
• England’s Roger Fenton is considered the first
war photographer.
• His photographs of the Crimean War (1853-
1856) made the realities of war more
accessible to a public used only to newspaper
accounts or sketches and paintings to
understand news.

3. Crimean War
• The Crimean War was a conflict between Russia on one
side; Great Britain, France, Turkey and Sardinia on the
other
• At issue: control of the Holy Land, then under the
Ottoman Turks, but access to the sites of the region
were contested between Catholic France and and
Orthodox Russia.
• Popular reminders of the Crimean War today: advances
in military medical care through the efforts of Florence
Nightingale, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “Charge of
the Light Brigade,” and Fenton’s photograhs.

4. Roger Fenton Crimean War Collection
• 263 of Fenton’s photographs from the
Crimean war are digitized and on-line through
the Library of Congress:
http://www.loc.gov.mutex.gmu.edu/pictures/collection/ftncnw/background.html
• The Fenton Crimean War collection is
contextualized in the Library of Congress on-line
catalog

5. Fenton’s Letters
• Roger Fenton’s letters from the Crimea are
digitized and on-line via De Montfort
University, Leicester, UK.

6. Who is Errol Morris?
• Documentary film maker
• Writer
• Called a non-fiction artist, a few of his films
include the Academy-Award-winning, The Fog
of War (2003), the multiple-award-winning
The Thin Blue Line (1988, Netflix streaming),
Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, JFK

7. Morris (continued)
• An avid explorer, Morris is also described as
obsessive, overall strange, and sometimes
brilliant.
• His article trilogy about his quest to establish
which photograph came first generated
223,000 words in reader comments. Added to
the 25,000 words in his articles, the length
exceeds that of Moby Dick.

8. Fenton photograph [OFF]

9. Fenton photograph [ON]

10. But consider
• Photography was a new technology at the time.
• The photographer was limited to static scenes
because of the status of his equipment
• Viewers assumed photographs were posed or
staged rather than eye-witness accounts of
events. They were not considered guarantors of
truth.
• Fenton often looked for or considered artistic
approaches to his work. Manipulated
cannonballs, very simply, created a more intense
statement of the havoc and desolation of war.

11. How did Morris go about analyzing the
primary sources?
• Morris followed steps of the historical thinking
process.
• He asked a question.
• The he turned to
• Sourcing
• Contextualizing
• Close Reading
• Reading the Silences
• Corroborating

12. What were the steps of the historical
thinking process?
• He consulted specialists to hear multiple
theories and the foundations of those theories
• He queried other primary sources.
• He contextualized the photographs in the
chronology (the time) of the war and the
geographic space of the historical narrative.
• He investigated the state of the technology of
photography during the Crimean War era--
1854-56. (contextualized the technology)

13. Next Steps
• Morris conducted a close reading of the visual
content of the photographs
• He looked at the silences. What wasn’t there?
• Throughout his investigation, he corroborated
conclusions, including the opinions and biases
of other historical and forensic photography
experts

14. The Grand Finale
• Morris turned to digital technology
• Forensic photographic analysis enabled Morris
to rule out categories of analysis and add
additional factors
• In addition to scientific evidence, forensic
analysis cited the need to look at photographs
as both representational and as art and as the
reflection of the photographer’s objectives.