Musings from the Margins: Aphnodium from Gogar

26 Feb 2016: To people in 1839, photography must have seemed so mysterious and magical that it bordered on science fiction (but rest assured, both Aphnodium and Gogar were real, as we will see). To Henry Talbot, his new art was a marvelous fusion of hard science and the lyrical hand of Nature. Sometimes one seems to learn …

A Little Bit of Magic Realised: Talbot Explains Photogenic Drawing

19 Feb 2016: Common table salt – sodium chloride. Even though some exotic variants are revered by foodies and all forms of it are roundly denounced by certain health enthusiasts, it is such an ordinary and necessary part of our lives that we rarely give it a second thought. Yet it was a key ingredient in Talbot’s photographic …

Happy Birthday Henry !

12 Feb 2016: Yesterday, in 1800, William Henry Fox Talbot was born in his uncle’s home of Melbury, in Dorsetshire (as it was then known, Dorset to post-Edwardian types). Happy Birthday Henry! May we offer you some of your own flowers in celebration, perhaps from Lacock Abbey’s garden, perhaps from its hothouse. But first, no tribute to Talbot …

‘On the Art of Fixing a Shadow’ – Talbot’s first publication on photography

5 Feb 2016: If your calendar pages start with Sundays, this week began with Henry Talbot’s first paper on photography being read to the Royal Society on 31 January [1839]. Last week we saw some examples of the types of photographs that Talbot exhibited at the Royal Institution on 25 January, the first photographic exhibition in Britain and …