Fox Talbot: Dawn of the Photograph
Super exhibition
at the Science Museum looking at the life and work of one of the inventors of
photography, Fox Talbot.
It was fascinating
to see his sketch book from Italy where he used a type of camera obscurer to
compose the images and started to think about how you might capture the image
directly onto paper rather than drawing it. The section on about his house,
Lacock Abbey, and the images it appeared in was really interesting and I
particularly like the pictures of the
lattice windows and the rocking horse, Firefoot.
It was wonderful
that a large picture of Holyrood House by Fox Talobot’s great rival Daguerre.
I’d never seen a painting by him and it was all about light and shade. There
was a large section on the various books he published with originals of the
photographs used as well as looking at how they were used in the books.
I was most
intrigued by his valet and assistant Nicolaas Henneman who set up a print
workshop in Reading to mass produce Fox Talbots work and ended up running a
rooming house. I’ve since found out that Ruskin made his valets learn about
developing photographs. Was this a Victorian thing?
Closes on 11
September 2016.
Comments