William Henry Fox Talbot ( ), William Henry Fox Talbot ( )

Talbot used an early type of camera often referred to as a ‘camera obscura’. He wanted to be able to capture the images produced onto paper.

Talbot's original contributions included the concept of a negative from which many positive prints can be made. Talbot produced glass negatives and paper prints called Calotypes.negative

William Henry Fox Talbot The Ladder 1845

He experimented with contact printing of flowers, ferns and leaves directly on to photographic plates. These were called ‘photogenic drawings’. We call them ‘photograms’. William Henry Fox Talbot, "Leaves of Asparagus," 1840

Man Ray experimented with photograms, applying them to a more ‘arty’ product that Man Ray called ‘Rayographs’. This is a form of Lensless Photography.

Talbot’s main rival in capturing photographs was Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre who had worked with the man who was the first to produce a permanent photographic image, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre Daguerre produced silver plate ‘one off’ photographs called Daguerrotype. These were kept inside small containers in order to prevent the metal from scratching or tarnishing. They were back to front, ‘mirror images’.

The modern ‘equivalent’ of a Daguerrotype would be a Polaroid photograph- also a one off image. Polaroid's sourced from the internet

David Hockney – Polaroid ‘photocollage’

Web links: Fox Talbot National Trust Fox Talbot Museum V&A Curtis Moffat Photograms webpage Another nice Photograms site Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre Man Ray A brief history of photography