Stumbled onto a fascinating story today.

“You mean to tell me that you went all the way to the Crimea because of one sentence written by Susan Sontag?” My friend Ron Rosenbaum seemed incredulous. I told him, “No, it was actually two sentences.”

That quote starts off the three part series of Errol Morris’ quest to find out the story behind the two different versions of Roger Fenton’s famous Crimean War photos of “The Valley of the Shadow of Death”. Which came first? Was one staged? A long story, but well worth it.

“While I was wrestling with these questions, it occurred to me that there was an even deeper question. How did Sontag know the sequence of the photographs? How did she know which photograph came first…”

The words that will likely stick with me the longest are a from Mr. Morris quoting Dennis Purcell.

“Certainly the more information we get, the higher the level of ignorance seems to be.” – DENNIS PURCELL

• Which Came First – Part One
  
• Part Two
• Part Three

Update: For my own clarification, I used PhotoShop to highlight the differences between the two photos, using copies of the photos restored by Dennis Purcell that were made available by Errol Morris. While these aren’t the resolution necessary for minute evaluation, it does highlight the moved rocks and cannon balls in question. Click on the image for a higher resolution version.

Obviously some of the differences visible are changes in lighting caused by time and cloud cover, but the brightest points of this image are the items which seemed to move between the two photos.