[Wall in Melon Ground, Lacock Abbey]

The ability of photographs to transcend time, one of their most marvelous aspects, is also one of their most deceptive. They bring to us scenes of yesteryear, but we interpret those scenes with the eyes of today. For example, the dry stone wall that forms the critical backdrop of this negative and its print (see 84.XZ.574.104) appears ancient to us now, and it was certainly built in a manner familiar to many generations of Lacock Abbey. However, it might well have had a different meaning for Talbot, one representing change and modernity. In 1833, the same year in which Talbot first conceived of the idea of photography, his step father, Captain Charles Fielding, was supervising the extensive changes being made to the grounds of the estate. Many of these were inspired by Talbot’s mother’s newly revived interest in the old abbey. Stones were cast from the backyard to the melon ground and were put to use to make a wall “to hide the frames & dung heaps from the avenue,” as Talbot described in a letter from 1833. It was this freshly built structure that was to catch his eye a few years later.

Whether he constructed this scene or merely came upon, Talbot’s growing artistic sense is clearly seen in the arrangement of the tools. The pyramid formed by their handles creates a powerful core for the image, and the dimensionality is heightened by the strong gleam of the shovel’s blade. Increasingly conscious of the public audience he might reach, Talbot inscribed the negative “Scene at Lacock H. F. Talbot 1840” and sent it to his friend, the journalist and scientist Sir David Brewster. Obviously proud of the picture, Talbot also promptly sent copies to another friend, the scientist Sir John Herschel and to the Italian botanist Antonio Bertoloni.

Larry Schaaf, William Henry Fox Talbot, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2002), 32. ©2002 J. Paul Getty Trust.