What is "valley of the shadow of death"

n. 1 (context idiomatic English) A symbolic description of the world, meaning darkness and death are (symbolic) valleys on earth one must walk through, that is, part of the human experience. 2 (context idiomatic English) A very dangerous place.

Valley of the Shadow of Death may refer to:

• The phrase as translated into English in the King James Bible version of Psalm 23
• The Valley of the Shadow of Death, as described in The Pilgrim's Progress by poet John Bunyan
• In the Shadow of the Valley of Death, a 2000 album and song by Marilyn Manson
• The Valley of the Shadow of Death, a 2005 album by The Tossers
• "Valley of the Shadow of Death", a 1978 single by Throbbing Gristle on D.o.A: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle
• " Valley of the Shadow of Death", an 1855 war photograph by Roger Fenton
• "The Valley of the Shadow of Death", alluded to in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Valley of the Shadow of Death is a famous photograph by Roger Fenton, taken on April 23, 1855, during the Crimean War. It is one of the most well-known images of war.

Roger Fenton was sent to record the Crimean War by Thomas Agnew of Agnew & Sons, where England, France, and Turkey were fighting a war against Russia. The place of the picture was named by British soldiers The Valley of Death for being under constant shelling there. When in September 1855 Thomas Agnew put the picture on show, as one of a series of eleven collectively titled Panorama of the Plateau of Sebastopol in Eleven Parts in a London exhibition, he took the troops'—and Tennyson's—epithet, expanded it as Valley of the Shadow of Death with its deliberate evocation of twenty-third psalm of the Bible.

In 2007 film-maker Errol Morris went to Sevastopol to identify the site of this "first iconic photograph of war". A second version of the photograph without cannonballs on the road leaded to question the authenticity of the picture. Hitherto opinions differed concerning which one was taken first but Morris spotted evidence that the photo without the cannonballs was taken first. He remains uncertain about why balls were moved onto the road in the second picture—perhaps, he notes, Fenton probably deliberately placed them there to enhance the image. However, according to the Orsay Museum, "this is unlikely as the fighting raging around him would probably not have allowed him to do so". The alternative is that soldiers were gathering up cannonballs for reuse and they threw down balls higher up the hill onto the road and ditch for collection later.