C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas Daguerre
Bruce Bernard
OUT OF THE SHADOWS: HERSCHEL, TALBOT AND THE INVENTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY by Larry J. Schaaf
Yale, £45, pp. 187
The collaboration between William Henry Fox Talbot and John Herschel in the former's invention of negative/positive photography was a scientifically complex one, but simple and harmonious in human terms. Talbot was a gentleman scientist of considerable talent and Her- schel one of the first rank. Talbot was part- ly motivated by modest artistic ambition frustrated by being only clumsily able to make drawings with the aid of a camera lucida or obscura. Herschel was extremely adept with the former, but his interest in photography was largely scientific.
Out of the Shadows by Larry Schaaf explains as fully as it ever has been how the wonderful 'natural magic' which led willy-nilly to the cinema and television came about, and how Talbot's diffidence and procrastination cost him the unequivocal glory gained in France by Daguerre.
The book is beautifully produced and worth possessing simply for the exquisite printing of the subtle colouration of Talbot's 'photogenic drawings' and salt prints. Wine dark, dried blood, dark umber and dull orange were among the tints that were obtained by fortuitous chemical varia- tions, while black and white was scarcely thought of.
The satisfaction these colours afford is a mysterious but very real one. The French `primitive' photographers of the 1840s-50s were certainly more stylish photographic artists than Talbot, but there is a moving quality in the Englishman's work that his underlying passion and status as the inventor makes his alone. This is a hand- some book about two good and ingenious men.
`Cherub and Um' by William Henry Fox Talbot.
Salt print from a photogenic drawing negative, 29 April, 1840. (The Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock)
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