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 …

Lost Friends, Bomb Cyclones and a Country Covered With Snow

5 Jan 2018: Instead of starting 2018 with laments, I would rather briefly celebrate the lives well spent of two photohistorians who were friends and who had very different but dramatic effects on my Talbot studies. Both were swept away late last year by illness, long before their time. Dr Bodo-Balthasar von Dewitz passed away on 17 November. …

Holiday Treats: the spirit of the ‘Waites’ trumps ‘The Waits’

29 Dec 2017: guest post by Brian Liddy While scouring Talbot’s oeuvre for a seasonably festive image my eye kept being drawn to yet another photographic copy of a lithograph by the satirist HB Doyle, one titled “The Waits”. Accepting its content at face value, five street musicians livening up the atmosphere, I could picture it gracing an …