Lace

Lace

1844·Salted paper print·Image: 18.6 × 22.8 cm (7 3/8 × 9 in.); Paper: 18.6 × 22.5 cm (7 3/8 × 8 7/8 in.)

<p>William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the inventors of photography, was a polymath who felt as comfortable writing Greek verse as he did experimenting with botany and chemistry. His negative/positive process—and the reproductive possibilities it engendered—came to dominate photography until the digital age. Talbot held artistic aspirations, but he was also interested in the myriad scientific and commercial applications for photography. He hoped that his photographs of lace, for example, might make it easier to copy intricate patterns and thus facilitate manufacturing. The negative for this print was likely made by laying a fragment of lace upon a piece of photosensitized paper and exposing it to the sun, without the aid of a camera.</p>

Catalogue

Year
1844
Dimensions
Image: 18.6 × 22.8 cm (7 3/8 × 9 in.); Paper: 18.6 × 22.5 cm (7 3/8 × 8 7/8 in.)

Artist

William Henry Fox Talbot
William Henry Fox Talbot

Photography

William Henry Fox Talbot was an English scientist, inventor, and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the later 19th and 20th centuries. His work in the 1840s on photomechanical reproduction led to the creation of the photoglyphic engraving process, the precursor to photogravure. He was the holder of a controversial patent that affected the early development of commercial photography in Britain. He was also a noted photographer who contributed to the development of photography as an artistic medium. He published The Pencil of Nature (1844–1846), which was illustrated with original salted paper prints from his calotype negatives and made some important early photographs of Oxford, Paris, Reading, and York.

Dorset, UK

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Record

Verified by WattsOS
Year
1844
Dimensions
Image: 18.6 × 22.8 cm (7 3/8 × 9 in.); Paper: 18.6 × 22.5 cm (7 3/8 × 8 7/8 in.)
Watts ID
WW-1844-023970

Source

Source
aic
Status
verified

Artist

William Henry Fox Talbot

William Henry Fox Talbot

Photography

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