Inventing Photography: William Henry Fox Talbot in the Bodleian Library

Batchen (Negative/Positive), a history professor at the University of Oxford, surveys the career of Henry Fox Talbot in this illuminating, richly illustrated offering. Popularly known as the “English inventor of photography,” Talbot discovered in 1834 that paper coated with silver chloride solution was light sensitive and capable of rendering facsimiles of flat objects, such as leaves or a piece of lace. In 1840, Talbot perfected the process, which he dubbed “calotype” (literally, “beautiful picture”) by adding gallic acid to the solution, allowing images to develop in a fraction of the time. While his early photographic innovations were focused on possible applications in science and industry, Talbot later became interested in art and aesthetics, and photographed still life arrangements and experimented with composition and focus. As well, the author details how Talbot sometimes artistically exploited the visual distortions of the camera’s lens, including elevated views and manipulations in scale and scope, anticipating the style of modernist photography. Batchen draws on a fascinating mix of work from the inventor’s career—Talbot’s renderings of lace, which in his day were regarded as trompe l’oeil wizardry, still seem arrestingly true to life—and brings Talbot’s artistic evolution to life in energetic prose. This foray into the origins of photography delights. Photos. (June)