The Traveller’s Camera

23 Mar 2018: 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 …

Of Loss, Lauds, Leaps, and Lazarus

16 Mar 2018: Given Henry’s early and intense interest in mathematics, we must not forget that Wednesday this week was National Pi Day (3.14) and renew our pondering of just what Talbot might have thought of digital photography. Like many, I was devastated when Monday morning brought the terrible news that Pete James had passed away the previous …

Talbot’s Rouen, a tale of two cities

9 Mar 2018: I am delighted that the ever-productive sleuth Rose Teanby returns with another in her series of examinations of Talbot’s photographic responses to the industrialising world around him. But first, we need to celebrate a double birthday that occurred this week, on Wednesday 7 March. I am happy to recognise Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (7 March 1765 …

‘Taken From The Actual Objects Which They Represent’

2 Mar 2018: Corporate records are amongst the most elusive of archives. As time goes by, the paper piles up and becomes increasingly irrelevant to current operations. When a company winds down its business, few care about preserving the past. And when a business spirals into failure, there is even less likelihood that the historical record will be …

First impressions from Jaanika

23 Feb 2018: We got a boost of energy in January when Jaanika Vider joined our staff. She had just come from Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum whilst labouring on her PhD in the History of Anthropology. Her experience is practical as well as historical, for she is a keen amateur photographer and previously reorganized Larry Fink’s vintage prints …

The hands into which this beautiful and ill fated invention has fallen

16 Feb 2018: Last weekend, on 11 February, Henry Talbot would have celebrated his 218th birthday. And we shouldn’t forget that he shares that birthday not only with Thomas Edison but also the consummate experimenter, Mark Osterman, who fell somewhat short of Talbot’s number. Henry Talbot had an uneasy relationship with capitalism, being ensnared between an 18th c …

Miscellanea Photogenica, No. 8

9 Feb 2018: An occasional series of tasty morsels that cross my desk More on Talbot’s equipment Last week Roger Watson’s guest blog explored the cameras that Talbot used, the first blog in what I hope becomes a series on the physical underpinnings of Talbot’s photographs. In looking at some old snapshots that I had taken in the …

The Hunt for Talbot’s Cameras

2 Feb 2018: Wednesday brought us the 179th anniversary of Henry Talbot’s first paper on photography Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, read before the members of London’s Royal Society on 31 January 1839. The gods celebrated appropriately this week by producing the ‘Super Blood Moon’, an astronomical event that surely would have fascinated Henry. Today, …

The Pencil of Talbot (& mysterious others)

26 Jan 2018: Yesterday (in 1839), in hasty response to Daguerre’s surprise announcement in Paris, Henry Talbot first revealed his photogenic drawing process to the public. His vehicle for this was a rapidly organised exhibition at the Royal Institution in London, following the customary weekly lecture by his friend Michael Faraday. The popular lecturer marveled that “no human …

Floating Philosophic Visions

19 Jan 2018: Origin or creation stories are often problematic, for invariably they involve imperfect or partial memories of a near-distant or far-distant past. Often these are filtered through contemporary needs or desires, sometimes deliberately, sometimes unconsciously. The first time that Henry Talbot was confronted with recollecting the roots of his invention was in January 1839 when he …

Around the World in 80 yards – Brunel and the SS Great Britain

12 Jan 2018: Rose Teanby, our resident Isambard Kingdom Brunel expert, now turns her attention from London’s Hungerford Bridge to another aspect of the interaction between Henry Talbot and the famed Victorian engineer. If you have yet to read the correspondence between them, I suggest that you have a look at the struggle between two men who shared …