William Henry Fox TalbotEngland, 1800–1877Two Plant Specimens
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Über das Werk
Contained within this haunting and poetic image is the seed of photography: the possibility of creating a negative from which an unlimited number of positives can be made. William Henry Fox Talbot produced this image by placing botanical specimens on sensitized paper and exposing them to light. He made this groundbreaking discovery after his 1833 honeymoon on the shores of Lake Como, in Lombardy, Italy. Frustrated by his inability to draw his Italian surroundings accurately, Talbot recalled the fleeting images of external objects that appeared within a camera lucida (an optical prism that creates a superimposed image on an artist’s drawing surface) and wondered how he could make them “imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper.” What resulted, two years later, were the first camera negatives.
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Unveiled in 1839 and called photogenic drawing, Talbot’s process was perfected two years later into the calotype (from the Greek word kalos, meaning “beautiful”). By the end of his life, Talbot—whose far-ranging interests included mathematics, botany, etymology, and ancient Assyria—had also discovered the basis of halftone printing, obtained twelve patents, and authored seven books, including one of the first photographically illustrated books, The Pencil of Nature (1844).
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- Inventarnummer
- 1972.325
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Derweil im Leben von William Henry Fox Talbot
Das ganze Leben1837 · Auszeichnung
Royal Society Bakerian Medal
16. März 1837
Daughter born: Rosamond Constance Talbot
25 January 1839
First showing of photographs at the Royal Institution
Shortly after Louis Daguerre’s daguerreotype was announced in early January, Talbot asserted his priority and, at a Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution, exhibited several paper photographs he had made in 1835. Within a fortnight he described the nature of his process to the Royal Society, while Daguerre revealed no useful details of his own until mid-August.
1840
Invents the calotype
Talbot found a way to print any number of positives on salted paper from a paper negative; new chemicals cut the exposure to a minute in bright sunlight. He called the method the “calotype” (from kalos, beautiful), informally the “talbotype”: unlike the daguerreotype with its single positive, it effectively created modern photography.
1840–1841
Post: High Sheriff of Wiltshire
February 1841
Patents the calotype
Talbot obtained an English patent for the calotype process and sold licences at £20 each, later lowering the fee for amateurs to £4 while professionals paid up to £300 a year; scientists saw it as a hindrance to scientific freedom. He justified his rigour by the roughly £5,000 he had spent on photography; for science the method was free, and Talbot himself published the first known photomicrograph of a mineral crystal.
