AT THE GALLERY OF THE SOCIETY OF PAINTERS in Water Colours in Pall Mall East in the autumn of 1855, Roger Fenton exhibited three hundred and twelve photographs taken in the Crimea. Undertaken with the patronage of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and the Duke of Newcastle, the then Secretary of State for War, Fenton’s photographic record was intended to inform the Victorian public of the “true” condition of the soldiers in what was fast becoming an unpopular war. In the catalogue, one photograph bore the title “The Valley of the Shadow of Death,” a title with both biblical and literary resonances for exhibition audiences in late 1855.1 Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” had been published in the Examiner on 9 December 1854, causing a sensation both at home and in the Crimea.2 Organized around variations on the refrain “Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred,” the poem assumed anthem-like status during the period when Fenton was in the Crimea. Filtered through the lens of Tennyson’s poem, Fenton’s photograph appears to record the traces of a charge or a battle scene that has just taken place.