Comparative Study: Roger Fenton & Robert Capa

Assignment 2: Comparative Study
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Roger Fenton & Robert Capa

Old-picture (2006-2008). Camp of the 4th Dragoons, convivial party. Available: http://www.old-picture.com/crimean-war/000/Dragoons-convivial-party-Camp.htm. Last accessed 28th November 2011.
Old-picture (2006-2008). Camp of the 4th Dragoons, convivial party. Available: http://www.old-picture.com/crimean-war/000/Dragoons-convivial-party-Camp.htm. Last accessed 28th November 2011.

John Godfrey Morris. (1998). The Magnificent Eleven: The D-Day Photographs of Robert Capa. Available: http://www.skylighters.org/photos/photo2.jpg. Last accessed 08.12.11.
John Godfrey Morris. (1998). The Magnificent Eleven: The D-Day Photographs of Robert Capa. Available: http://www.skylighters.org/photos/photo2.jpg. Last accessed 08.12.11.

The English born Roger Fenton’s career began with his paintings in the 1840’s; however, by 1852 he was successfully creating photographs after visiting the Great Exhibition and deciding to travel to Paris to learn the trade. Fenton began to be recognized after his visit to Russia in the autumn of 1852, where he made the first photographs that the English public had seen on Russia. When the Crimean war began in 1854, Fenton was commissioned by Thomas Agnew and Sons to document it; this is when he made the photograph that I have chosen to analyse. Fenton was set the task by Thomas Agnew and Sons to photograph the war in way that would create the perspective that the conditions in the Crimean were fine, which is why I chose this photograph; because I feel it really does create the altered perception of the war. To compare with this photograph by Fenton, I chose and image by Robert Capa, who was then working for Life magazine, taken during WWII on the Omaha beach, almost one hundred years later. I chose this photograph because the photographs are the same in that they are