William Henry Fox Talbot and the birth of the photograph

HE WAS a man of some accomplishments, but drawing eluded him. So while on honeymoon in Italy in 1833, William Henry Fox Talbot adopted the camera lucida, a tracing device, to help him sketch scenes. “The idea occurred to me,” he later wrote, “how charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper.”

Although not the first to develop a photographic process (the Frenchman Louis Daguerre is usually handed those laurels), Talbot remains the godfather of the modern “art of fixing a shadow”. His first photographs highlighted the precision and fine grain of the new medium. Later work is wittier and more domestic, as by then Talbot had developed photography as an art for everyone. His company in Reading, UK, mass-produced paper prints from his calotype negatives. It also made prints from others’ negatives, copied artwork and documents, and took portraits.

In 1934, Talbot’s niece Matilda passed on 6500 items of his to London’s Science Museum. From 14 April a new exhibition, Dawn of the Photograph, presents the best of these, including fragile early experiments in the art.

This article appeared in print under the headline “How to fix a shadow”