Henry Fox Talbot: 11 works

'Wiliam Henry Fox Talbot was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge and is considered the inventor of the negative/positive photographic process. In 1834, he began experimenting with light sensitive materials on paper and produced his first camera image in 1835.'

'This photogenic drawing, like most of Talbot's pictures before 1839, is a negative; that is, the actual tones of the object are reversed.'

'William Henry Fox Talbot was still experimenting with the negative/positive process in photography when he made this negative of a painting on glass. Because the painting was on a transparent support, Talbot was able to make a direct-copy negative from it.'

'Talbot did not perfect his negative/positive calotype process until 1840, which is perhaps one of the reasons that the daguerreotype process in France was more immediately popular. Eventually, however, Talbot's invention became more influential because it allowed multiple prints to be made from a single negative.'

'Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot revealed a rival photographic process just weeks after Daguerre's announcement in 1839. Unlike the daguerreotype--a one-of-a-kind object distinguished by its clarity and detail--Talbot's process produced a paper negative that could be used to print multiple positive photographs, each with a soft, atmospheric character.'

'Talbot's plaster cast of a Hellenistic marble bust of Achilles's comrade Patroclus provided an animated and expressive substitute for the live model, and he photographed it more than forty-five times between 1839 and 1843, when this version was made. This particular print was once plate 17 in a copy of Talbot's The Pencil of Nature, the first photographically illustrated book, published in parts between 1844 and 1846.'

'In May 1843 William Henry Fox Talbot went to Paris with his assistant Nicolaas Henneman. A year later, with Talbot's support, Henneman established the first photographic printing firm in Reading, England.'

'William Henry Fox Talbot's image of a graceful and heroic oak tree, one of the first images to be fixed with a "hypo" solution, represents a pivotal development in the history of photography. In 1839 Talbot made public his process for fixing images on paper treated with silver chloride.'

'In this image, made barely five years into the history of photography, Talbot found a daring composition and a compelling intersection of the religious and secular, the historic and present day. His photograph shows the unfinished base and part of the shaft of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, with the early-18th-century church of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields in the background.'

'William Henry Fox Talbot's image of a graceful and heroic oak tree, one of the first images to be fixed with a "hypo" solution, represents a pivotal development in the history of photography.'

'Here Talbot turned his camera from the vaulted splendors of his home, Lacock Abbey, which he photographed extensively, to the simple door of the stable and the resting tool of the worker. Talbot exhibited and sold variants of this image with the titles The Stable Doorand Stable Yard in Talbot-type.'