Spring 1840: “Highly interesting in regard to art”

24 Feb 2017: In scrutinizing the ‘Account of the Processes employed in Photogenic Drawing’ last week, Mike Ware revealed the Goldilocks nature of Talbot’s achievement of photogenic drawing. I only wish that Helmut Gernsheim were still around to contemplate Mike’s answer to his puzzlement “that photography was not invented earlier remains the greatest mystery in its history.” I …

“An Account of the Processes employed in Photogenic Drawing”

17 Feb 2017: Guest Post by Dr Mike Ware It brings me the greatest of personal pleasure to welcome one of our Advisory Board members to his first guest posting. Many of you will know Dr Mike already through his writings, which combine a deep understanding of chemistry, a close reading of historical sources, the observant eye of …

The Launch! A Birthday Present for Henry

10 Feb 2017: The Catalogue Raisonné project came to Oxford in August 2014 and this blog commenced in May of the following year. At times it must have seemed that this little weekly beast was the centre of the project, but in fact all during this period a great deal of technical development and gathering of digital files …

Talbot Relics

3 Feb 2017: Photographic history seems to go in and out of favour in long periodic cycles. In the very beginning years of the art, historians such as Robert Hunt and Isadore Niépce wrote from a contemporary’s point of view, having first-hand knowledge of the actors and observing history as it unfolded before them. In the 1860s-1870s there …