To the Calotype: Happy 175th Birthday!

25 Sep 2015: WHFT, Three Chimnies (Large), one of his first calotype negatives, 7 October 1840 Please join me in imagining that these are candles on the birthday cake. It was in the days prior to this week in 1840 that Henry Talbot made the tremendous breakthrough that propelled his negative/positive photography into the wider public arena. Within …

The soliloquy that opened a door

18 Sep 2015: Yesterday, the 17th of September in 1877, William Henry Fox Talbot passed away peacefully at Lacock Abbey. Born in 1800, he had profitably surpassed his threescore years and ten, remaining intellectually active to the very end. The obituaries and tributes to him were various, those coming from the photographic community being surprisingly sparse, balanced by …

Mousetraps, dentists, and long rifle cartridges

11 Sep 2015: Writing from Cowes on the Isle of Wight in the autumn of 1835, Talbot’s wife Constance described taking advantage of the bright moonlight to go rowing on the estuary of the River Medina: “The colouring reminded me a good deal of some of your shadows … I wish you could have taken the outline of …

The last of the Summer pleasures: An Ancient Door, Magdalen College, Oxford

4 Sep 2015: The Summer Bank Holiday passed earlier this week in the UK and on Monday the Labor Day holiday will mark the unofficial end of summer in the US. The Rock House garden is now at its peak and producing an almost embarrassing bounty, but it won’t be long before we will be lamenting the paucity …

Summer pleasures: The Hungerford and Clifton Suspension Bridges

28 Aug 2015: In a daring composition, Talbot commands our attention to the bustle and speed of the rapidly growing metropolis of London. His central subject is the Hungerford pedestrian bridge, started in 1841 and opened on 1 May 1845. The boats that it was meant to replace compete for our attention, seemingly racing onshore to get ahead …

More on ‘The Damned Leaf’

22 Aug 2015: Sometimes what you are seeking is right under you nose (or in this case, long forgotten on one of my bookshelves). For those new to this blog, you might first want to scroll down to the posting for 19 June. It outlines the key points of a lecture that I gave recently about a controversial …

Summer pleasures: ‘A Flower of Heath’ for Sir John Herschel

21 Aug 2015: I cannot help but be reminded of Anna Atkins’s beautiful cyanotypes of algae when seeing this brace of negatives. Echoing her images, this botanical specimen is floating in a dreamy space, seemingly detached from gravity, freed from its surroundings. However, the plant is a terrestrial one, representative of the more than 600 species of Erica …

Summer pleasures: A Group Taking Tea at Lacock Abbey

14 Aug 2015: The process of arranging group photographs can fairly be compared to the problem of herding cats. Unlike drawing, photography at least captures all the players simultaneously, however they stand. Writing about ‘The Ladder’ in The Pencil of Nature, Talbot explained that “when a group of persons has been artistically arranged, and trained by a little …

Summer pleasures: ‘A Bush of Hydrangea in Flower’

7 Aug 2015: The pompoms of the hydrangea insistently demand the attention of the gardener. Its name, derived from the Greek ‘hydor’ (water) and ‘angos’ (jar or vessel), reflects its copious thirst for water. Hydrangea are at their best when the sunshine is plentiful, as it is here. Most varieties bloom in the spring or early summer but …

Summer pleasures: Off to the Seaside

31 Jul 2015: Taken in the cool mist of winter, Talbot’s view of Brighton’s Royal Pavilion provides a fleeting visual escape from the present summer heat. The seaside has always been associated with summer days, defying the pressures of everyday life, days tempered by the cooling effect of the ocean. About 150 miles (240 km) southeast of Lacock …

Summer pleasures: Winter Trees Reflected in a Pond

24 Jul 2015: With our current hot and muggy weather, this refreshingly calm wintry view encourages the imagination to wander. It is such a timeless photograph – converted to more conventional black and white tones it might well have been taken by a pictorial photographer in the 1890s, or a proud member of a camera club in the …