Cottages at Balaklava 1855

Editor: This is Roger Fenton's "Cottages at Balaklava," a photograph taken in 1855. It's a striking image; the texture of the ruined buildings and the ships in the background are quite evocative. What are your thoughts on this piece? Curator: This photograph allows us to consider the materials present not only within the image but also in its production. Think about the labor and resources extracted to produce the paper, the chemicals, the camera itself, and how they intersect with the landscape and architecture shown. What kind of consumption did the cottages serve? How does the ruin imply a transition in purpose? Editor: That's interesting. I was so focused on the aesthetic of the ruin. It's like romanticism crashing into reality, maybe? Curator: Indeed. This photographic "realism," clashes directly with its original context, of consumption and material needs in 1855. How do we see the effect of the Crimean War ripple through to even seemingly "peaceful" subjects? I wonder what other kinds of images were deemed palatable back in England when presented of this very unromantic subject. Editor: It's unsettling to realize that the cottages and labor that sustained a community were deemed disposable, secondary to a narrative of romantic landscape, but now their ruin functions as its own monument to the events which took place there, a testament in materials. Curator: Exactly. We must remember the conditions under which such photographs were commissioned and distributed. Fenton himself comes under this sort of scrutiny. Who had access to photography in the 1850's? Editor: That certainly gives me a new way of looking at 19th-century photography, as documentation and a commodity itself. Thanks for helping me understand more of what the work of art actually encompasses beyond just subject matter. Curator: And it reminds us to never view any art object, especially photographs, as completely neutral or divorced from their means of production and dissemination.