Latticed Window, Lacock Abbey, August 1835. In his Pencil of Nature (1844), Henry Talbot observed that whatever history might think of later advances, nothing could ‘admit of a comparison with the value of the first and original idea’. This iconic photogenic drawing negative of the oriel window at Lacock Abbey, a celebration of the act of seeing and recording, is the most potent symbol we have of that first and original idea. It was not the first camera negative that he achieved, nor is it completely alone as a survivor of the pre-1839, pre-public period. But the fusion of Talbot's lilliputian image with his own handwriting has made it a powerful and, indeed, the pre-eminent symbol of his quest to master light. The labelling was almost certainly done for the occasion of Talbot's first public exhibition of his photographs, on 25 January 1839 at the Royal Institution in London.
— Larry J. Schaaf
Bibliography
- Schaaf, L. J., Out of the Shadows: Herschel, Talbot and the Invention of Photography (1992)
