Roger Fenton is known for covering the Crimean War, which is a pity, because it only formed a small proportion of his output in all the other areas, such as landscape photography; also it somewhat obscures the major part he played in promoting photography in general.
In January 1851 Roger visited Paris, and was really impressed by the freedom that photographers in France had been granted. By contrast, progress in England was very slow because of Talbot's claims arising from his patent.
In 1852 he visited Russia, and his photographs were amongst the first ever to be seen in England, guaranteeing him instant fame.
Fenton photographed Queen Victoria's family, and also became the official photographer at the British Museum.
Fenton's war pictures, therefore, tend to portray war as a gorgeous pageant; there are no dead bodies, and one might almost imagine that the Crimean war was like some kind of a picnic. There are no action shots (this for technical reasons), but those of soldiers are carefully set and posed groups.
Felice Beato
Felice Beato was the first photographer to devote himself entirely to photographing in Asia and the Near East. He photographed in Japan, India, Athens, Constantinople, the Crimea, and Palestine. He settled in Yokohama; from 1863 to 1877 made hundreds of ethnographic portraits and genre scenes in Japan.
Felice's photographic career was also long affiliated with images of war. He photographed the Opium War in China in 1860 and the Sudanese colonial wars in 1885.
While in partnership with his brother-in-law J. Robertson in the 1850s, he documented the Indian Mutiny and its aftermath. Their photographs are believed and known to be the first to show human corpses on a battlefield.
TO BE CONTINUED
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