Details
TALBOT, William Henry Fox (1800-1877). Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or the process by which natural objects may be made to delineate themselves without the aid of the artist's pencil... (Read before the Royal Society, January 31, 1839). London: R. and J. E. Taylor [for the author, February] 1839.
4o (296 x 230 mm). Collation: A1 B4 C2 (A1r title, A1v blank, B1r text, C2v blank). 7 leaves. Stab-stitched in original plain green-gray wrappers, uncut (wrappers slightly foxed, trace of removed label or deleted inscription on front wrapper); fitted folding case. Provenance: Sidney Breita---? (faint 1892 pencil inscription on upper wrapper).
FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST SEPARATE PUBLICATION ON PHOTOGRAPHY. Nicphore Nipce produced the first photo-engraving in 1822, using bitumen of Judea on glass, and the first photographic image from nature in 1826 or 1827, on a pewter plate, but was reluctant to divulge the secret of his process and never published it. During the same period Louis Daguerre experimented with fixing images, first on paper and then on metal plates, joining forces with Nipce in 1829, and producing the first successful daguerrotype in 1837. Meanwhile, across the Channel, the mathematician and chemist William Henry Fox Talbot had been inspired by unsuccessful attempts to sketch landscapes using the camera obscura to seek a method of imprinting natural images on chemically sensitized paper. After several unsatisfactory experiments using paper coated with successive coats of silver nitrate and sodium chloride, fixed with a strong solution of salt water, and set within a camera obscura, Talbot finally succeeded, in 1835, in obtaining a few tiny negatives, having resolved the problem of underexposure by outfitting several very small cameras with fixed-focus microscope lenses of short focal length. One of these 1-inch square negatives, showing the window of the library of his home at Lacock Abbey, survives at the Science Museum in London. After further experimentation using solar microscopes, Talbot set aside his photographic work for other pursuits, and did not return to it until Dominique Arago's announcement of Daguerre's successful experiments, at the Acadmie des Sciences on January 7, 1839, prompted him to hurriedly claim priority of invention. He read the present hastily-written account of his own invention, outlining the process but withholding details of the chemicals used, to the Royal Society on January 31, and published it in February in this small edition, intended for private distribution. Along with his paper Talbot exhibited some of his specimens of "photogenic drawings," including superimposed flowers, leaves and lace, enlarged images taken with the solar microscope, and photographic copies of an engraved view, the latter including some positive copies, the first positive photographic images ever produced.
In fact, Talbot's and Daguerre's photographic processes differed radically. Daguerre's copperplate method, published six months later (see lot 1004), produced a vastly superior image. Nonetheless, not only was Talbot justified in claiming priority (if narrowly) for his own invention, but his method possessed the fundamental advantage of being able to produce, at least in theory, multiple images. Talbot was the first of the early experimentors in photography to propose, in this paper, a fundamental principle of modern photography, the use of a fixed negative image as the master copy to be used to produce a theoretically unlimited number of positive copies: "If the picture so obtained is first preserved so as to bear sunshine, it may be afterwards itself employed as an object to be copied; and by means of this second process the lights and shadows are brought back to their original disposition" (p. 12). The great advantages of this idea were, however, not immediately realized and Talbot's "Photogenic Drawing completely failed to capture the imagination of the public... Talbot did not sufficiently stress the enormous possibilities which would be opened up once the process was sufficiently improved to allow of taking really successful camera photographs... As recognition was not freely forthcomoming, Talbot enforced it by patenting his improved process, the calotype, in 1841, and kept a vigilant eye on all trespassers on his rights" (Gernsheim, p. 79). (See also lot 1005.)
EXTREMELY RARE. H. and A. Gernsheim, The history of photography (New York 1969), chapter 7; Norman 2049.
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FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST SEPARATE PUBLICATION ON PHOTOGRAPHY. Nicphore Nipce produced the first photo-engraving in 1822, using bitumen of Judea on glass, and the first photographic image from nature in 1826 or 1827, on a pewter plate, but was reluctant to divulge the secret of his process and never published it. During the same period Louis Daguerre experimented with fixing images, first on paper and then on metal plates, joining forces with Nipce in 1829, and producing the first successful daguerrotype in 1837. Meanwhile, across the Channel, the mathematician and chemist William Henry Fox Talbot had been inspired by unsuccessful attempts to sketch landscapes using the camera obscura to seek a method of imprinting natural images on chemically sensitized paper. After several unsatisfactory experiments using paper coated with successive coats of silver nitrate and sodium chloride, fixed with a strong solution of salt water, and set within a camera obscura, Talbot finally succeeded, in 1835, in obtaining a few tiny negatives, having resolved the problem of underexposure by outfitting several very small cameras with fixed-focus microscope lenses of short focal length. One of these 1-inch square negatives, showing the window of the library of his home at Lacock Abbey, survives at the Science Museum in London. After further experimentation using solar microscopes, Talbot set aside his photographic work for other pursuits, and did not return to it until Dominique Arago's announcement of Daguerre's successful experiments, at the Acadmie des Sciences on January 7, 1839, prompted him to hurriedly claim priority of invention. He read the present hastily-written account of his own invention, outlining the process but withholding details of the chemicals used, to the Royal Society on January 31, and published it in February in this small edition, intended for private distribution. Along with his paper Talbot exhibited some of his specimens of "photogenic drawings," including superimposed flowers, leaves and lace, enlarged images taken with the solar microscope, and photographic copies of an engraved view, the latter including some positive copies, the first positive photographic images ever produced.
In fact, Talbot's and Daguerre's photographic processes differed radically. Daguerre's copperplate method, published six months later (see lot 1004), produced a vastly superior image. Nonetheless, not only was Talbot justified in claiming priority (if narrowly) for his own invention, but his method possessed the fundamental advantage of being able to produce, at least in theory, multiple images. Talbot was the first of the early experimentors in photography to propose, in this paper, a fundamental principle of modern photography, the use of a fixed negative image as the master copy to be used to produce a theoretically unlimited number of positive copies: "If the picture so obtained is first preserved so as to bear sunshine, it may be afterwards itself employed as an object to be copied; and by means of this second process the lights and shadows are brought back to their original disposition" (p. 12). The great advantages of this idea were, however, not immediately realized and Talbot's "Photogenic Drawing completely failed to capture the imagination of the public... Talbot did not sufficiently stress the enormous possibilities which would be opened up once the process was sufficiently improved to allow of taking really successful camera photographs... As recognition was not freely forthcomoming, Talbot enforced it by patenting his improved process, the calotype, in 1841, and kept a vigilant eye on all trespassers on his rights" (Gernsheim, p. 79). (See also lot 1005.)
EXTREMELY RARE. H. and A. Gernsheim, The history of photography (New York 1969), chapter 7; Norman 2049.