Holiday Treats: The Ghost on the Screen

22 Dec 2017: guest post by Brian Liddy It has been a while since I have highlighted my favourite tool available on the website, the ‘Image Comparison’ tool. In the preliminary Image Viewer I can adjust the contrast or brightness of a photograph in an attempt to see if it really is a ‘Portrait of a Man’ or …

Holiday Treats: The Talbot Family Christmas, Glimpsed

15 Dec 2017: In deference to your obligations to the world of commerce and more importantly to give you more time to enjoy the festive activities, each year around this time we switch over to the more compact ‘Holiday Treats’ format for the blog. With the very best wishes to you for the holiday season Larry guest post …

The positives of negatives – and displaying the unviewable

8 Dec 2017: In spite of the seemingly perverse efforts of the self-proclaimed ‘World’s favourite airline’, I’ve finally made it to Paris. The occasion is an international conference the subject of which would have been unthinkable a decade ago: Henry Talbot’s first friend in photography, the negative. Les négatifs papier français: production, caractérisation, conservation – French paper negatives: …

Talbot, Brunel and pile-driving with Brother Jonathan

1 Dec 2017: Today’s guest is Rose Teanby, a photohistorian so eager that she single-handedly located the long-neglected grave of the important photographer Robert Howlett and then raised funds for its restoration and rededication. Rose has a particular interest in photographic documentation of the great Victorian engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In an earlier blog, Talbot’s 16th c Photograph, …

String them up, turn them over – and don’t forget your milking stool

24 Nov 2017: What is the ‘correct’ way to orient a Talbot image? If you were hanging this 1839 photogenic drawing negative, which way would you prefer? Or if this was a quiz, what clue do you have to guide you to the correct answer? (the ‘H. F. Talbot 1839’ inscription just showing through below one plant implies …

Miscellanea Photogenica, No. 7

17 Nov 2017: An occasional series of tasty morsels that cross my desk More on Kensal Green Long time readers of this blog will know that we are trying to put together the bits and pieces of the history of Nicolaas Henneman’s printing works at Kensal Green, just outside London towards the site of Eastman Kodak’s later (and …

Sleuthing in a Library’s Davenport

10 Nov 2017: In 2004, an era of relative tranquility when unsolicited emails were less common, I recoiled at the word ‘Law’ in the From line. Normally lawyer-averse, I was relieved to see that this came from a Harvard librarian in their Law School’s Special Collections. Mary Person had become intrigued by the signature on the flypage of …

A Scene in a Library: Part Two – Imaginatively

2 Nov 2017: Dr Mirjam Brusius joins our Advisory Board I’m excited to welcome Mirjam Brusius as the latest addition to our Board. While completing her PhD on Talbot’s antiquarian interests at Cambridge, Mirjam catalogued Henry’s unruly but rewarding notebooks for the British Library. She was one of the organisers for the 2010 conference William Henry Fox Talbot: …

A Scene in a Library: Part One – the Literality

27 Oct 2017: Talbot’s death in 1877 drew out a vivid memory for an unidentified contributor to the Daily Telegraph: “some eight-and-thirty years ago there used to be visible in the corner of an optician’s shop window in Regent street, a pale and dingy vignette on which, probably, few passers-by ever cared to bestow a glance…the little picture …

Postponing the Silver in Frankfurt and Oxford

20 Oct 2017: Last month, our own Brian Liddy was honoured by The Royal Photographic Society in their Awards ceremony held at The Royal Society in London. He was presented with the Fenton Medal by the Society’s President Walter Benzie , HonFRPS. Dr Michael Pritchard FRPS, Chief Executive of The RPS, has pointed out that this medal was …

Photography & the 1851 Great Exhibition

13 Oct 2017: This marks the first contribution by our newest Advisory Board member, Dr Anthony Hamber. Anthony is a leading expert on photographically illustrated books and is currently working on a book and exhibition on today’s topic. One of the illustrations below is from the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and I cannot let pass …