Covered in cloth, a revealing image
This negative from the 1800s is the oldest photo in the Norton’s collection.
Visitors entering a sparsely appointed gallery at the Norton Museum might not immediately realize they’re in the presence of history. They might not realize they’re in the presence of anything at all — until they spot a small shelf covered with black cloth.
Beneath the cloth is “Lace,” a one-of-a-kind photogenic drawing negative by William Henry Fox Talbot. Dated from before 1845, the recently acquired negative is the oldest work in the IF YOU GO
What: “William Henry Fox Talbot and the Birth of Photography”
When: through July 15 Where: Norton Museum, 1451 S. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach
For information: Call 561832-5196 or visit norton.org Norton’s photography collection. The cloth shields it from damaging light.
It’s impossible to anoint a single individual as the inventor of photography, as several pioneers own a piece of that prize. But as “William Henry Fox Talbot and the Birth of Photography” explains, he was the first to invent a photographic process by which multiple positives could be produced from a single negative.
The exhibition is the first of a series of exhibitions tracing the history of photography that Tim Wride, the William and Sarah Ross Soter curator of photography, plans to mount beginning next season. He’ll have more space
when the expanded Norton opens in February, with the first galleries dedicated to the museum’s 4,500-work photography collection.
“We’ll be able to mobilize work that’s really interesting so that people can understand the backstory of the contemporary work we keep bringing in,” Wride said.
The show also prepares the ground for next season’s “Out of the Box: Camera-less Photography” exhibition.
Talbot was a wealthy scientist, scholar, mathematician, astronomer and inventor. Luckily, he couldn’t draw. If he had, he wouldn’t have become frustrated with his attempts to do so in 1833 during a vacation in Italy.
When he returned to Lacock Abbey, his estate in England, he considered the problem of how to produce an image mechanically. (Much later the estate was used as a location for the Harry Potter films.)
He created “Lace” by placing a fragment of lace onto light-sensitized paper and exposing it to sunlight.
In 1835, Talbot put photography aside to pursue other interests. That is until January 1839, when word came from Paris that LouisJacques-Mande Daguerre had presented his process for mechanically capturing images to the Academie des Sciences.
Daguerre’s announcement galvanized Talbot immediately to alert the British Royal Academy to his method. Throughout his life, he resented the attention given Daguerre almost as much as the pension the French government paid him for the rights to his invention.
The show includes examples of daguerreotypes, which were much sharper than Talbot’s images.
But Talbot’s process had the advantage of being infinitely reproducible. All it took to produce a positive image was to place another piece of light-sensitive paper on the negative and expose them to the sun. As time went on, Talbot employed cameras and refined his process by adding chemicals that reduced the developing time and stabilized the image.
The Royal Academy applauded Talbot’s discovery. But the British public was indifferent. “It was like ‘Why do I need this?’” Wride said.
Conversely, daguerreotype portraits — which were produced in the familiar format of miniature paintings, but were much cheaper — became wildly popular.
To educate the public on the potential uses of his invention, Talbot turned to another popular format, the illustrated book. Reproductions from his book, “The Pencil of Nature,” are on view in the gallery.
Talbot never got rich off his invention. But he had a presentiment of what photography would become. In the book’s text alongside his image “The Open Door,” he writes, “The chief object of the present work is to place on record some of the early beginning of a new art.”