[The Head of Christ from a Painting on Glass]

In mid-1839, Willian Henry Fox Talbot began the experiments that led in 1840 to his discovery of how to shorten the exposure time and increase the speed with which a negative could be made using chemistry to accelerate the development of a latent image. The principle difference between Talbot's process and Daguerre's process is that one can make multiple positive paper prints using Talbot's method while the metal daguerreotype is a unique image that cannot be reproduced. Talbot achieved multiple prints of the same image by placing his original paper exposure—a negative, where lights and darks are reversed—directly over a second sheet of paper that has been coated with light-sensitive chemicals, exposing it to sunlight, and then fixing it as he had his negative. This process can be repeated many times.

One starting point for Talbot was a painting of the head of Christ on glass by an unknown artist that he utilized to create numerous negatives. One starting point for Talbot was a painting of the head of Christ on glass by an unknown artist that he utilized to create numerous negatives. They were of uniform density when first completed but faded from the long exposure necessary to create positives from them. In order for his negative/positive process to succeed, Talbot had to devise ways to prevent the negatives from fading by using improved fixatives and shorter exposure times. The Getty has two iodide-fixed photogenic negatives (this image and 84.XM.1002.44) and one salt-fixed positive (84.XM.1002.45).

Adapted from Weston Naef, The J. Paul Getty Museum Handbook of the Photographs Collection (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995), 12-13. © 1995 The J. Paul Getty Museum.