Talbot’s calotype was in development since 1833, subsequently developing alongside the development of the Daguerreotype. The positive/negative process of the calotype unlike the Daguerreotype enabled it to be printed several times, a prototype to the analogue photography still in use today. Interestingly, Talbot derived the name of his process from the greek ‘kalos’, meaning beautiful (Daniel 2004).
Description: Nicolas Henneman holding a copy of The Pencil of Nature
Date: 1844,
Medium: Calotype
Photographer: William Henry Fox Talbot
Source: National Media Museum, Bradford
Image from the National Media Museum Blog, retrieved 25th April 2014.
Fox Talbot’s Pencil of Nature was the first commercially published book ‘illustrated without any aid whatever from the artist’s pencil’ (Fox Talbot, 1844 1).
To engage with the original text yourself, click here.
The Archaeological Potential of Photography 