At the risk of intruding upon Roger Watson’s hunt for Talbot’s equipment (and we look forward to more blogs on this topic from him soon) there is a particular piece of kit that has always intrigued me, Talbot’s Traveller’s Camera. Sadly, rather like the manuscript basis for Grant Romer’s Io-types, the camera is known to exist only as a published description. However, it is yet another proof of Henry Talbot’s ingenious mind.

Ben Shahn depicted this itinerant photographer in 1938, before the advent of Polaroid and long before digital imaging. Working on the street, the tintype photographer knew that he had only a brief opportunity to reach into a customer’s purse. A trip to a darkroom would have meant a lost sale, so he developed his tintype directly in the camera. That shiny cylinder just behind his wrist held the chemicals necessary to quickly develop and fix the plate. No diversion to the darkroom was needed, tempting the customer with his own image right on the spot.

Nearly a century before, in the early 1850s as Frederick Scott Archer’s wet collodion process began taking over photography, the motivations for developing negatives on the spot were somewhat different. In Archer’s process, the glass plate had to be coated with a highly volatile collodion solution, immediately sensitized with chemicals, placed in the camera and exposed while wet, and then developed straight away before the collodion could dry. This necessity was the mother of many inventions of portable darkrooms and in some cases apparatus where the development could place within the camera itself.

In 1865, Talbot’s friend Charles Piazzi Smyth and his wife Jessie travelled to Egypt to scientifically measure the Great Pyramid. Photography was one of the tools they employed but they were self-funded and could not afford the porters to carry the heavy cases of chemicals and a dark tent. In addition, dust and insects were a real challenge to the sticky collodion. So Piazzi invented his own camera, made of metal so the dry heat would not crack the wood, equipped with a simple but reliable cylindrical shutter, but most importantly incorporating his very clever invention of a plateholder. For economy, he relied on standard and cheap 1×3 inch microscope slide glass. In the morning, working in a darkroom set up in a conveniently nearby abandoned tomb, he would load his four-sided plate holder with four sensitised slides, fill the tank with water, take his photographs during the day and develop the negatives back in the darkroom at night. Defying the skepticism of The Royal Society, Jessie taught herself how to make enlargements from the resulting inch-square negatives.

By this time, Henry Talbot himself had long ceased being an active photographer, instead turning his efforts towards bringing permanent photographs to the printed page (including some photoglyphic engravings that he made for Piazzi Smyth). However, long before this Talbot had conceived of and executed a camera with internal processing. Drying out was fatal to wet collodion negatives. For Talbot’s paper calotype negatives the problem was present but less severe. Ideally, his calotype paper would be exposed while damp, for then it was in its most sensitive state. A longer exposure would be required for completely dry paper. However, if the paper was prepared in the morning it became increasingly unpredictable as the day wore on. Sometimes it would stay good for twelve or even twenty-four hours but sometimes it would start to fail within minutes. Also, if the sensitive papers were prepared in advance, one had to have sufficient plate holders (as we would come to style them) for as many photographs as were anticipated. Made of wood with delicate sliding darkslides, these were both expensive and bulky. None of this bode well for the travelling photographer.

We have already discussed Talbot and Henneman’s venture into Scotland in October 1844, leading to the publication in 1845 of his second photographically illustrated book, Sun Pictures in Scotland. While it might be difficult for today’s coddled tourist to imagine, the region north of Hadrian’s Wall was just beginning to open up to travellers in the 1840s. Sir Walter Scott had imaginatively created a mysterious land and the young Queen Victoria taking Balmoral had added to the lustre. But the railways were yet to have their impact and roads were rough. Nevertheless, Talbot and Henneman managed to cover much of Sir Walter’s ground, carrying a fair amount of equipment and securing what are to my mind some of the finest and most perceptive images that they ever produced.

Which leads me to a real puzzle.

I think that one possible answer may lie in Talbot’s early and creative attempt to solve the same problem that faced the 1938 tintypist and Piazzi’s 1865 Egyptian quest, that of how to make practical the field use of the sensitive negative material. On 23 November 1852, Talbot wrote to Lovell Reeve, the editor of The Literary Gazette, reflecting back on his Scottish expedition of 1844. There may be some other recording hidden in the thousands of uncatalogued and under-examined pages of Talbot’s notes, but at present this letter is the only record that we have of his invention of the Traveller’s Camera. Reeve promptly published it for all the world to consider.

The trigger for Talbot might have been a letter that he received from his friend, the Rev. George Wilson Bridges, a terribly enthusiastic calotypist who took some fantastic images but whose ambitions often outran his expertise. Bridges had just returned from the Middle East when, on 9 November 1852, he wrote to Talbot “you are aware of the difficulties I had to contend with, not only in taking the negatives where I had but scanty material, & no convenient place, better than my tent – often no other than my cloak, under which to manipulate.” Talbot echoed this in his letter to Reeve: “A FRIEND of mine recently returned from a long journey in Egypt, Syria, and other parts of the Levant, and who has brought home with him a very large collection of photographic views, has written to me respecting the difficulties he had to contend with in those scarcely civilised regions, where he had only a tent – often only his cloak – under which to manipulate. It is surprising, under such circumstances, that such beautiful views should have been obtained; but there can be no doubt that many of his attempts must have failed, and many opportunities have been lost.”

Talbot had attempted sensitising the paper in advance, and then carrying “it ready prepared, in closely shut paper-holders, to the scene of action. It was in this way that in September, 1844, I made a series of views of Abbotsford, the residence of Sir Walter Scott, which were published by subscription in 1845, in a small volume, entitled, ‘Sun Pictures in Scotland.’ The paper was prepared in the inn, at Galashiels, several miles distant, and it retained its sensibility during some hours sufficiently well.” But he goes on to point out that these sheets sometimes failed, which “required all the principal points of view to be taken in duplicate as a necessary precaution.” He had to intentionally reduce the sensitivity of the negative paper in order to make it more stable. “These inconveniences led me to the invention of a modus operandi to which, if it has not been described before, as I believe it has not, I propose to give the name of the Traveller’s Camera, as it greatly facilitates the production of these beautiful pictures during the hardships and privations of foreign travel. ”

Now, there is some ambiguity here. Did he make or at least conceive of his Traveller’s Camera in 1844? or closer to the time of the letter? His language indicates that he actually made the device but it is unclear just when. “First, I mount the camera itself upon a board … I then make a kind of table, or support, beneath the surface of which are sunk or concealed three troughs.” The first of these was filled with a solution of silver nitrate, the second a developer, either gallic acid or ferrous sulphate, and the third with plain water. “The usual paper-holder is dispensed with, but instead of it there is a simple frame, to which a sheet of paper or a pane of glass can be attached from behind, and taken away again, while the frame remains in the camera. The. upper part of the frame carries a long handle, passing through the lid of the camera.” The camera slid forward or back on the platform, with marks aligning it over the three baths. Talbot set out in the morning with his paper already iodised, the first step in making calotype paper but not yet sensitive to light. He could put a sheet in the camera in broad daylight, then close the camera up, align over the silver bath and dip the paper in to sensitise it. Re-positioned behind the lens, the exposure was made. The camera body was then shifted to the second mark and the paper plunged into the developer. Once complete, the bath of plain water came into play, which served both as a means of stopping development and as a dark wet storage place for the exposed and developed negative. The final fixing and washing could be deferred until he was back home.

Could Talbot have been experimenting with this when he was in Scotland in 1844? Were the smaller negatives field tests of this new approach? The subscribers to Sun Pictures in Scotland, mostly the great and the good strong-armed into purchase by Lady Elisabeth, were unlikely to appreciate this technical breakthrough and there was no letterpress to explain it.

Or was the inclusion of the duplication and mixed sizes simply another inexplicable publishing decision made by Talbot?

I think that Talbot’s A mountain rivulet which flows at the foot of Doune Castle is one of his most thoughtful and complex images. But why would he choose his smaller negative for inclusion in Sun Pictures, relegating the larger one to single prints? It just doesn’t make sense.