[The China Bridge over the River Avon at Lacock Abbey]

In the earliest days of photography, before cameras became standardized articles of commerce, William Henry Fox Talbot produced his negatives in an arbitrary variety of sizes and proportions. Since they were made on plain paper, cropping them to a shape appropriate to the image was not unusual. Trimming was also sometimes used to remove chemical or optical defects. To our modern eyes, accustomed to the regularity of factory-made snapshots, it is difficult to imagine the reasons for the extensive and almost fanciful cutting of this work. It is tempting to think the samples were removed by some subsequent research for test purposes, but evidence shows that the trimming must have been done early on, perhaps as soon as the picture was processed. A print Talbot made from this negative, housed at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, was immediately dispatched to Sir John Herschel; another is in a private collection. Both show this same outline. Talbot must have wanted to excise large areas of defects or undesired details and did so seemingly oblivious to the extraordinary geometrical shape the negative was assuming.

The River Avon still runs its tranquil course around Lacock Abbey, much the same as in the scene Talbot depicted. The bridge is now gone, but its footings continue to serve the needs of local fishermen.

Adapted from Larry Schaaf, William Henry Fox Talbot, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2002), 30. ©2002 J. Paul Getty Trust.