[Linen]

William Henry Fox Talbot began his experiments with light-sensitive materials in mid-1834 and in 1835 achieved results that have survived to the present day. His first pictures created with light are the shadows of plants (85.XM.150.13) or of textiles (such as this image) placed directly on top of a piece of ordinary paper that was brushed with a solution of table salt and then a solution of silver nitrate. When the silver nitrate comes in contact with the salt it becomes light sensitive silver chloride. Eventually Talbot made pictures by exposing sensitized paper to sunlight through a lens fitted to a wooden box known as a camera obscura (85.XM.150.22). He called these images "photogenic drawings," thus associating them with the history of art rather than natural history. Until the spring of 1839, most of Talbot's pictures were negatives, that is, the tones of nature are reversed, with the light areas reading as dark and vice versa.

Adapted from Weston Naef, The J. Paul Getty Museum Handbook of the Photographs Collection (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995), 8-9. © 1995 The J. Paul Getty Museum.