Canon Fodder

Fenton, Roger. Valley of The Shadow of Death. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.Errol Morris, dramatizes a compelling three part intrigue about a famous Crimean War photo on his NY Times blog. Roger Fenton's "Valley of the Shadow of Death" was taken twice over an hour and half one afternoon in April, 1855. The difference between the two photos provides Morris one of his latest opportunities to unpack the metaphysics of photography, or said another way, how photographs raise crucial questions about what we mean when we say something is real or true. I won't go into all the details, but the opening quote sums it up rather well:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow…
— T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”