Summer Pleasures: Victorian taste for Pineapples

13 Jul 2018: Guest post by Jaanika Vider To continue with the fruity theme started in last week’s Summer Pleasures, I will turn my attention to a more tropical species. For some weeks now, pineapples, which are native to South America, have piqued my interest. The initial fascination was triggered by a wonderful course taught at the Ashmolean …

Summer Pleasures: Cherry Ripe

6 Jul 2018: Summer is here, which means the days lengthen while the Talbot project blogs shorten. This, the first of the season’s “Summer Pleasures” has fallen to me, and I don’t mind telling you, the shorter format can be a bitter sweet experience for the author. Which Talbot photograph to write about this time, and what has …

No way to treat a lady

15 Jun 2018: Guest post by Brian Liddy Last week my colleague, Jaanika, asked me if I had any ideas for a new Talbot blog post and suggested writing about Schaaf number 3710 as she had recently added an image making it one of the records on the project website with all its records complete and fully illustrated …

Observing by Polarisation

8 Jun 2018: Guest Post by Dr Kelley Wilder Last week was half-term in many places around the UK, and I suspect that many of us were hiking for at least part of the time if the weather held. If we had been more like the 21-year-old Henry Talbot, we might have embarked as he did on a …

Sun Pictures Then and Now: Talbot and His Legacy Today

31 May 2018: guest post by Brian Liddy This week’s offering is a counterpoint to Larry’s previous blog, A Tale of Two Photo Londons. Larry’s blog alerted us to an exhibition curated by Hans P. Kraus Jr. which was soon to be unveiled at this year’s Photo London (not to be confused, of course, with the other photoLondon …

The Art of Circular Crystals

25 May 2018: Due to unforeseen circumstances, this week’s blog comes with an unexpected introduction from me, as Bodley’s Librarian, the successor to the wonderfully named Bulkeley Bandinel, who was the Librarian at the time that Talbot photographed the Library in the 1840s. Dr. Kelley Wilder, the author of the guest blog this week, is a respected figure …