Officers on the Lookout at Cathcart's Hill
Roger Fenton
British, 1819–1869
1855
A salted-paper print from a glass-plate negative by Roger Fenton showing officers standing on a rocky plain at Cathcart's Hill, intended to document the Crimean campaign while presenting a composed, dignified view of war.
The vast, low horizon and pale sky dwarf the tiny, clustered figures and scattered white stones, giving the scene a stark, lonely sense of scale and distance.
As one of the earliest photographs of a war landscape, it helped establish documentary and wartime photography—using emerging processes to bring distant conflicts into public view while shaping their visual narrative.
Medium
Salted paper print from a glass-plate negative
Dimensions
9 × 13 9/16" (22.8 × 34.5 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Fund, The Family of Man Fund, and Purchase
Accession
375.1990
Palette
Exhibitions
