Crimean Heroes : William Gardner, Donald McKenzie and George Glen
c. 1856



This photograph may have been taken at Dover, where the 42nd Royal Highlanders were garrisoned in July 1856 at the end of the Crimean War. This was the first war to be efficiently documented in pictures. Joseph Cundall and Robert Howlett were commissioned by Queen Victoria to create a series of photographs of Crimean Heroes when the war was over. Cundall was responsible for studio portraits showing the successful heroism of Victoria's men. Howlett worked on location at the naval dockyards and the veterans' hospital recording the underside of war, in the portraits of those who were severely wounded.