Censorship in the Crimean War Photography. A Case Study: Carol Pop de Szathmari and Roger Fenton
Censorship in the Crimean War Photography. A Case Study: Carol Pop de Szathmari and Roger Fenton

Summary/Abstract: The research base of the present study is the censorship applied to Carol Popp de Szathmari’s and Roger Fenton’s photographs taken in the Crimean War. Being at its debut as war photography, photography offers a positive perspective on reality in contrast with the dramatic perspective as it was rendered in the written media by the special war correspondent William Russell Howard. The Crimean casualties were caused by epidemics and the improper organisation rather than by physical combat as such, and photography immortalises only the idyllic aspect of the troops ignoring the terrible suffering caused by the hostilities. In order to understand this contradictory aspect, an insight of the phenomenon imposes itself as a necessary requirement with a view to the clarification of the way in which censorship functioned at the time, the causes that determined it, and its influence on the way photography is understood.

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