Revisiting the Valley of the Shadow of Death -> Carefully Aimed Darts →

Fenton’s most famous photograph, Valley of the Shadow of Death, of which there are two exposures, was taken in the Crimea. A Martian landscape recedes before the camera, the packed dirt road winding to the distance, pocked by scattered cannonballs lying in the ruts and gutters. No tree breaks the horizon, no solitary figure wanders the road. For a photograph of a war zone it is remarkably silent; I imagine not the sound of cannon fire, but perhaps merely the low whistle of the wind. It is an image of a landscape devastated, admitting no life. Fenton adopted the soldiers’ name for the valley, evocative in its Biblical associations. The 21st century viewer might call to mind Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic settings in the American west. (…)