From the Director: goodbye (for now)

28 Jan 2019: Has it been forty years or four? The first partially formed steps of the Catalogue Raisonné were undertaken decades ago when I was trying to make sense of the masses of Talbot archive material. The attic and cupboards at Lacock Abbey were daunting enough but I soon realized that their generous bounty was only part …

The Australian Connection

25 Jan 2019: Snow is falling as I write here in Oxford, but that’s not the only thing falling hereabouts. Like the snow, as work continues on the catalogue raisonné the number of records with no image attached continues to drop. For that reason, we are grateful to all the Talbot owners who still send us images to …

A dash of colour

18 Jan 2019: You probably miss our weekly blogs as much as we do. But now that we’re in the middle of what is often thought of as the darkest winter month we thought it would be good to bring some extra added colour into our lives. Easier said than done when our project is dedicated to monochrome …

Where did the time go?

21 Dec 2018: As 2018 hurtles to a close our thoughts begin to turn towards next year, the future, and what may be in store. When I look back on the past year I can’t help but think it’s just as well we can’t predict what’s coming down the track. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, …

A Cornucopia of Calotypes

28 Sep 2018: Guest post by Brian Liddy Welcome to this year’s calotype birthday celebration. It is reassuring to know that the Talbot catalogue raisonné will continue to be freely available online long after we have added the last image to the website at the end of this year. However, this may be the last chance we have …

Doubting Talbot

21 Sep 2018: All of us here on the Talbot project are proud to be able to say that there has been a blog dedicated to Talbot and his circle ever since the project officially began on 15 May 2015. The vast majority of almost 200 posts have been written by the project director, Professor Larry Schaaf, but …

Happy Family photographs

14 Sep 2018: There’s a pleasing symmetry to this week’s blog. In a way it mirror’s last week’s blog on paper photographs by a photographer better known for his daguerreotypes. Conversely, this week’s blog concerns daguerreotype portraits of a photographer better known for his photographs on paper. Our guest author this week is Jason Wright. Jason is a …

Claudet’s Talbotype (or Calotype) Portraits

7 Sep 2018: Now that the days are shorter, and the nights are drawing in, it is time to put the Summer Pleasure posts away and return to larger portions about Talbot and his work. Perhaps this is the blog equivalent of moving from summer salads to autumnal comfort food. Our first big helping of the season comes …

Summer Pleasures: A tale of two cities

31 Aug 2018: Last week’s blog looked at the international dissemination of photographs by Talbot and his circle, so it is fitting that this week’s guest blog comes to us from one of those distant locations: St. Petersburg, Russia. We are pleased to introduce you to Dr. Maria Medvedeva, Head of the Scientific Archives of the Institute for …

Summer Pleasures: Itinerant Images

24 Aug 2018: Guest post by Jaanika Vider August is the holiday season – as the schools close their doors for the summer, fewer and fewer people are seen in offices and many enjoy well-deserved time holidaying abroad. So it seems appropriate to dedicate our penultimate Summer Pleasures blog to the topic of distant places. From the first …

Summer Pleasures: What’s in a name?

17 Aug 2018: Guest post by Brian Liddy The things you learn while working on a catalogue raisonné dedicated to the work of a nineteenth century photographer. Of course, nothing should come as a surprise when that nineteenth century photographer is the polymath, William Henry Fox Talbot. Recently, Stephen Harris kindly supplied us with Latin names for many …