Roger Fenton's photographic van, with his assistant Marcus Fitzell Sparling (1822-1860) in the driving seat. Fenton is taking the photograph. The year is 1855, and this photograph was taken during Fenton and Sparling's trip to the Crimea to document the Crimean War (1854-1856). Roger Fenton (1819-1869) was a British photographer and one of the first war photographers. He returned from the Crimea with over 350 photographs, though most of them were posed. Sparling, a former soldier, was also a photographer, and had built his own camera in 1850.