Valley of the Shadow of Death (Roger Fenton)

Valley of the Shadow of Death is an albumen print photograph by Roger Fenton, taken on April 23, 1855, during the Crimean War.

[3] When in September 1855 Thomas Agnew put the picture on show, as one of a series of eleven collectively titled Panorama of the Plateau of Sebastopol in Eleven Parts in a London exhibition, he took the troops'—and Tennyson's—epithet and expanded it as Valley of the Shadow of Death with its deliberate evocation of Psalm 23.

[4] Film-maker Errol Morris went to Sevastopol in 2007 to identify the site of this "first iconic photograph of war".

[6][7][8][9] He remains uncertain about why balls were moved onto the road in the second picture—perhaps, he notes, Fenton deliberately placed them there to enhance the image.

[10] The alternative is that soldiers were gathering up cannonballs for reuse and they threw down balls higher up the hill onto the road and ditch for collection later.