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Ladies and gentlemen. It's wonderful to welcome you this evening to the Public Library, to this fabulous event,

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the college food lecture, and to hear Professor Larry Scharf, who I'm proud to say of this parish.

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And it's wonderful to see so many friends in the audience.

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I look forward to catching up with you all over drinks in bilateral hall after the lecture to which you are cordially invited.

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No, we are not going to go back.

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I am not going to introduce you, but I'm really just here to say thank you because Larry requires at least two more people to introduce.

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And at this point, it's my great pleasure to introduce Jemmy Reed,

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who's going to take the battle hymn and we'll gradually get to the library in a few minutes time.

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Thank you. Well, good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

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First of all, I would like to add my welcome to Richard evidence on behalf of the Royal Photographic Society.

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It's what I think will be a very special evening indeed. I would like to give all thanks to Richard and all his staff,

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who have been wonderful to not only providing the venue but also for their great help in making the event happen.

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It's has been a pleasure working with you all. This is the second Colin Ford lecture for the Royal Photographic Society Historical Group.

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It is held every two years to honour Colin Ford, who has, as many of you know,

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is a towering figure in photo history in Britain beyond what as possible?

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Yes, yes, he saved the children albums and albums for the nation.

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Later, he was director of the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television in Brexit.

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And I am delighted that we can mount this event in his honour, our distinguished speaker, this evening.

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Professor Larry Scharf, director of the William Henry Fox Talbot catalogue tonight and University of Oxford.

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I will now ask Colin, please, to introduce Professor Sean.

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I was asked as I was meeting, so many of my friends are the vote history and photo history world outside.

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What gave me the idea for the coming forward lecture and how did it happen?

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Well, I have to say deeply honoured and flattered as I am to be standing here introducing something called the Common Field Lecture.

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It wasn't my idea, and it's not my money that pays for it.

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So even if just occasionally I have not agreed with something with the Royal Photographic Society has done.

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I'm hugely grateful, very, very grateful and honoured that they instituted this series of lectures.

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And as you've already heard, this is the second of them.

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A bit of a change because the first one was given by someone from New York, the curator of the Andre Kemp Test Collection, whom I've never met before.

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So show me a real beginning.

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I don't know because I haven't done all the research, but I wouldn't mind guessing that I've known Larry longer than anyone else in this room.

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We met in the early 1970s when I first went to see the Wonderful Gowns Home Collection, University of Texas, where Larry was then teaching.

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And I'm sure most of you know about how Genzyme built up this most extraordinary collection, and it did cross my mind as Martin walked into the room.

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Supposing the V.A. had accepted the offer of the collection, which he made them all those decades ago, except they came with a helmet.

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Well, I know why they didn't get you set up to accept it.

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I think the history of collecting and museums of photography in this country would have been hugely different.

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Anyway, I went through my 1974 diary last year, that's when I think it was, but it isn't.

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And then I thought, he's a professor, he's a much better researcher than I am.

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Larry will know exactly the date and hour of which we first met.

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At least he will profess. But it was the early 1970s.

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Didn't we meet first if we went home?

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We went on to Eastman House for went on for that conference, he said.

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It was my first visit there, too. Anyway, you haven't come to listen to me reporting on.

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You've come to hear Larry, the most distinguished professor and photo historian.

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There is anywhere, I think. And as most of you will know, he was responsible.

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He's been working here in Oxford for a long time on the catalogue, raising a fox.

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Tolbert and I know a tiny bit about catalogue raisonné having, I think, written the first one ever about the photographer.

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But the Fox show, which is a much, much,

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much bigger statement that Julia Margaret Cameron at least had a rather limited number of photographs and a limited life.

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In a sense, fox to render a thousand words in one went down to twelve hundred here.

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I know I ought to be able to quote the exact number, but you know, what's the exact number of Fox stalwarts?

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Oh, the exact. I hope I never know exactly. The new one.

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Just this week,

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five new ones emerge that have the gold plated provenance and that they were simply the museum grounds and had not attached to the importance to them.

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So number keeps growing, but I think. I can certainly do 10 times jurors and maybe 15.

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Well, you are 10 times as good at the time. I know that, Larry. But again, the story is similar in a way and I will stop going on.

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But when the question is in which actually published it, I'm ready to give them off it.

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Come on. When we started, we'd found 800 images. By the end of the evening, we found twelve hundred and about six weeks before it was published,

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the marketing department on Case changed the name from the collected photographs of James Cameron to the complete photographs,

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so I said it will never be complete. That is a huge error.

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We'll find 50 within six months. Well, it was took slightly longer than six months, but yes, there are more than 50.

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Anyway, Larry, as you know, was due to give his final lecture at the end of the end of this years of working on the catalogue raisonné here and.

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Suddenly had a stroke. And didn't give the lecture, but it wasn't your fault.

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All right. Well, most things are my fault. I know that. But it seemed to me when I was asked who should give the second lecture?

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Because though it isn't my idea and so on while I'm around, I'm lucky enough to be asked who should give the lecture to some.

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But surely, if Larry is well enough to give the lecture,

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could there be anything better that we could do than invite him back to Oxford to give that missing lecture?

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He's got better enough to do it, I'm delighted to say. And yes, we all owe a huge.

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Congratulations to him for being here, Elizabeth, for helping him to be here and to Richard,

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for actually sponsoring the whole thing and arranging it all and giving us this wonderful lecture theatre and so on.

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So as I said, I'll stop right reporting know you haven't come to listen to me at all.

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Whatever it says up there, my name is almost, Oh, my name is better than this.

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Nevertheless, it's Professor Larry Scharf that you've come to here.

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Ladies and gentlemen, Larry.

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When I was first invited to the Colin Ford lecture, I thought it was a Colin Ford lecture, I didn't realise I'd be expected to give it myself,

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and I think I've asked them to turn the lights down so that it won't interfere with your napping.

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You certainly won't need any notes. The first talk I gave in here years ago and Richard can probably say exactly what it was.

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Everybody came in with construction booties and we had to send people across the street to the pub because the loos weren't active yet.

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If you choose to leave early, you won't be able to use that excuse tonight, so you'll have to come up with something new.

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The catalogue raisonné here is an online resource I'm envious of Colin having a printed catalogue raisonné,

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but with a very large number of images that we're dealing with and the constantly shifting landscape in online

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publication is the way to go and certainly in terms of adding new information as it's discovered and as it interacts,

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I'm a bit of a fossil myself. I prefer traditional ways of research and reading, but is simply overwhelming.

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Talbot studies started in earnest with his granddaughter, Matilda Talbot, who was surprised to inherit Lake Kabhie.

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She moved down from her native Scotland and changed her surname to top it and during the 1930s was

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a big promoter of her grandfather's work when he was really very barely known back during the war.

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Harold White came as a photographer to the scene to photograph an English village, getting along just jolly well.

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Thank you! And he fell in love, I think, with Talbot, but possibly with Matilda.

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But he and his family started visiting then every summer, and it's because of Harold White that you see this three young conservators in here.

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I apologise that you see this towering stack of letters, and you can maybe see his cigarette hanging out to indicate that he's a professional scholar.

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And he organised with Matilda's help all of the letters and photographs that he could find at that time in Laycock Abbey.

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Those of you who've been to Laycock or perhaps have seen the Harry Potter movie.

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It's a great rambling place, and we're honoured to have Roger Watson, the curator of the Fox Museum.

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But it's the same evening and they're still discovering things.

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Roger, you came up with something.

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What about a week or so ago that Lucy emerged from a shoe box somewhere in the attic and don't really know the details?

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Software changes are required? Your I.T. department, did you see that notice?

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Oh, I just got a notice of software requirements. Are you changing?

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I hope they don't mean my head. That's what.

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I was introduced to computers during a failed stint as an electrical engineering student at the University of Illinois in champagne.

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The iliac computer was the first transistor sized computer to be on a university campus,

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substantially less powerful than that mobile phone that you have in your pocket.

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I know you have one, but marvellous at the time.

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Of course, a lot of the work was manual.

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It required extensive cooling and wouldn't have been practical for this project, but did plant in me a sense of what one might do with such a machine.

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Being a photographer? As I started doing Tolbert studies, I started carrying a camera around.

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This is a homemade copy stand, it all folded up into a briefcase.

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And this is with me in St. Petersburg in 1994, was in St. Petersburg.

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During the Cold War, I would have been shot as a spy, rather stupid spy, I think.

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But you know, I have this whole little kit here with the camera outfit,

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but very limited capability of taking pictures because you were limited by the 36

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shots or in the roll film and then you had no way to merge that with the computer.

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The one before digital photography. And so, you know, the two had to exist in parallel.

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I started. A little earlier and then, but about that time, a flat file database,

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if some of you in here would have heard of DOS and it was an incredible thing to be able

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to organise about 14000 records of individual negatives and prints that were worldwide.

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And I was travelling a lot at that time, lecturing quite a bit.

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So any time I would go somewhere, I would take very primitive laptop and a four line screen recorded on micro cassettes.

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But I would take that into the collection and record all the data.

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Of course, don't pictures associated with it.

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And so I had to describe something that was trapezoidal and bumped up three millimetres on the left and so on.

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And the field lengths were quite restricted. And so if I ran out of room in one field, I had to tuck things in to another.

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So it became a real dog's breakfast after a while.

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But but as dogs find breakfast is interesting. No, I don't remember exactly when we met.

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It's a fake. I still have the same brown leather bag in the same punch, but I'm not sure too much else is the same.

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The same as Colin said he came to visit while I was teaching.

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Photo history at University of Texas is actually teaching photojournalism, and they needed a history component.

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So I started teaching photo history and started working with the helmet on Ellis and Grandson Collection and generally agree with Colin.

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There's times I have to steer him back towards the path of truth, but we agree on most things,

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and certainly one of the things that we agree on is that people likely Gerhard Simes did the outline map of a continent and it's up to us to.

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I'm stealing one of your lines now up to us to fill in the interior with all the details.

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And that's what we've been attempting to do ever since.

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Many of you in here, I know, are familiar with William Henry Fox Talbot.

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And then there are some new faces in here who perhaps have avoided that fate so far.

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So I just wanted to quickly review. This is a daguerreotype portrait taken of Talbot in 1844.

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So right around the time of the introduction to photography in the public in 1839,

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and you can see nice erudite man with with his book you don't see his balding here because of the top hat.

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He was a prodigious young man born in 18:00. This is always one of my favourite portraits of him.

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I should have put up an inverted version of this. If you'll all just stand in your head, it'll have the same effect.

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This was done when he was seven years old.

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It was done by one of his Welsh cousins, and I've always loved that solar flare of thoughts coming out of the top of his head.

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But in fact, it's an ink drip. And of course, it doesn't drip upwards.

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Except maybe in Trump's world, but ink doesn't drip upwards. This was inverted and ran down.

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So this was done at a minimum with a candle.

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And one of his cousins tracing the pattern on a piece of paper, possibly done in a camera obscura, which would have been around at the time.

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But he was introduced to optics and science and photography early on.

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This is now in National Museums Scotland.

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They call it Taubitz head its electrostatic machine and when you turn a crank at the little doll, circles attracted up there.

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But this is the sort of thing that he grew up with. These were his toys.

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Science brought up and tutored largely by his mother, Lady Elizabeth Fielding, who is the daughter of the Earl of Chester.

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Very bright lady and very ambitious for her son, something he didn't always share.

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And she she tutored him up to about age 10 or 11,

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and she taught him Greek and Latin and mathematics until she finally realised that he was beginning to outstrip her and overtake her,

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which I'm sure actually pleased her no end. The idea for photography started out, perhaps in a pattern that we would immediately recognise.

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This is a photo grim, a negative. This is a piece of botanical material put on a light sensitive surface, put out in the sun,

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and the light affected the area of where the leaves did not block the light.

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Lt was something that Torbett had studied, particularly.

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This is an apparatus that he designed before photography for measuring different effects of colour light in different perceptions of colour.

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And as you put things in here and crank them and our eye blends colour together.

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This was known to exist in the form of a printed paper and not too many years ago.

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One miraculously turned up in the United States in the collection and was acquired again by National Museums Scotland, who.

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Recognised what it was, so we have that physical manifestation.

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It was in October of 1833 that Talbot was travelling on the continent outside England,

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travelling on the continent, and he was a member of parliament at that time.

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But Parliament was in recess during the summer, and he had gotten married the year before.

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His wife, Constance, had never been on a European tour.

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So you could call this a delayed honeymoon. But in any case, he was going with his wife and his sisters joined up with him from time to time,

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and they found themselves outside Bellshill on Lake Como in Italy, specifically at Villa M.C.

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Everybody was sketching Intel, but for all of his accomplishments,

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he had published dozens of papers by now and several books for all of his accomplishments, he couldn't draw.

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And so he turned to the established little thing you see here burn a hole in the screen,

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a camera lucida, literally a room of like a camera lucida is prison and a little stem, as you see.

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And when you bring your eye up to the edge of the prison, when you get it just in the right position,

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your eye can still see your hand below on the drawing paper, and you can see through the prism nature out in front of you.

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So. As in many things, artistic, anybody standing next to you is not going to see anything, but you are combining that image in your brain.

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I'm the Henry Talbot of our family. I can't draw worth a damn. But this is my wife, Elizabeth's camera.

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Go see this set up at this position.

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I now want to show you, and I've researched it for many years, the very finest drawing that Talbot ever accomplished.

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And it was using a camera lucida at this very location.

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And I think you can clearly see why he needed to invent photography.

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He knew there in Italy that the camera lucida was of no value, both to helping him draw or making any permanent record.

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But he began to think about what light is and what light up and realise light does have a physical effect on things.

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You know, we see it in chlorophyll. We see it in other forms, of course, our own skin when we get a suntan.

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But light does physically change objects. And so he thought of the camera obscura room with darkness rather than a room of light.

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And the fact that light was actually projected within that camera and therefore there were different intensities of light.

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And he began to wonder if there was a way that he could record those different intensities.

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He had no apparatus with them. At that point, return to Laycock concavity returned to parliament.

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And sometime in 1834 began to experiment trying to take that idea that he had had in Italy and convert it to a reality.

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This is the so-called bottle room.

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It's a room at Lake Okeechobee, right above the kitchen, the kitchen, of course, a good source of glassware and pans and chemicals and water and heat.

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This was parts of this were purchased by the Smithsonian in Washington.

191
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And this is a slide I took from memory in 1974, thereabouts of this waxworks diorama that they set up in the Smithsonian,

192
00:24:48,050 --> 00:24:53,120
which sadly they since dismantled it and it's now off in storage.

193
00:24:53,120 --> 00:25:01,390
I don't know what happened to the wax in retail, but I would love to have in my living room.

194
00:25:01,390 --> 00:25:11,210
But he soon discovered by quoting paper with a light sensitive silver compound, that he could do this.

195
00:25:11,210 --> 00:25:21,010
He could put it out in sunshine below an opaque object, and the light would affect the chemical compound around that object.

196
00:25:21,010 --> 00:25:29,000
And so it would remain white. Now, unfortunately, as Wedgwood and others had found before him.

197
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:35,810
As soon as we started looking at this, it kept darkening because light within reach the areas where the plant was no longer.

198
00:25:35,810 --> 00:25:42,860
And the picture would self-destruct very, very quickly.

199
00:25:42,860 --> 00:25:50,410
Fortunately. He was forced to take a certain route.

200
00:25:50,410 --> 00:26:02,410
Silver chloride is the most sensitive of the silver compounds to light, but silver chloride is a bit like the snow in a snow cone here.

201
00:26:02,410 --> 00:26:06,790
That's John Ashcroft a bit like the snow in a snow cone.

202
00:26:06,790 --> 00:26:14,560
It's a flock in that matter. But by taking silver nitrate, which is not particularly sensitive to light,

203
00:26:14,560 --> 00:26:23,650
but it's easily soluble in water, you can put table salt sodium chloride in the paper fibres.

204
00:26:23,650 --> 00:26:33,380
And then when you coat on silver nitrate. Silver chloride is embedded, precipitated an embedded right there in the fibres.

205
00:26:33,380 --> 00:26:42,490
And it's actually fortunate that he was forced to go through that two step process to make his light sensitive materials.

206
00:26:42,490 --> 00:26:54,090
He soon discovered looking at the edges of his pictures that there was an accidental difference in the ratio between salt and silver.

207
00:26:54,090 --> 00:27:04,800
And as you can see here, the edge, which happened to receive more salt actually is not as sensitive to light.

208
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:10,680
And so he discovered by using a weak solution of table salt with silver nitrate.

209
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:13,620
He got a relatively sensitive paper.

210
00:27:13,620 --> 00:27:24,630
And then after exposure, if he flooded it with a strong solution of salt, that it was preserved and his images became relatively permanent.

211
00:27:24,630 --> 00:27:31,020
The next summer, the glorious summer of 1835, there was ample sunshine.

212
00:27:31,020 --> 00:27:37,230
He had improved his coating techniques, a great deal still using the same chemistry.

213
00:27:37,230 --> 00:27:43,950
This is what we would call a negative if the terms are reversed, it's done a little tiny camera obscura.

214
00:27:43,950 --> 00:27:52,840
His wife once called the mousetraps. She had the village carpenter box together and they had a hole on one end for a lens.

215
00:27:52,840 --> 00:28:00,360
He would have borrowed from his stock Laycock Gabby, and he would set these around the grounds of Laycock.

216
00:28:00,360 --> 00:28:09,110
You can imagine in this top hat the squire doing a crazy thing, and this is sharing its tower Laycock Abbey.

217
00:28:09,110 --> 00:28:12,890
A beautiful early negative, you can see how informal the paper is,

218
00:28:12,890 --> 00:28:20,870
it was just pasted inside this little box still preserved at the George Eastman Museum.

219
00:28:20,870 --> 00:28:30,650
The older amongst you would still want to call it George Eastman House Jersey Museum in Rochester, New York, and it's still perfectly visible.

220
00:28:30,650 --> 00:28:36,140
This is from 1835, and as far as I'm concerned, he has nailed it.

221
00:28:36,140 --> 00:28:41,120
This is permanent photography. That's even older than I am.

222
00:28:41,120 --> 00:28:47,960
And so by 1835, I would say he was fully successful.

223
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:56,900
He understood the idea of making a print from that negative that if he simply put another piece of sensitive paper, it would be reversed.

224
00:28:56,900 --> 00:29:01,490
But he saw no need to because, you know, he was perfectly happy with this drawing.

225
00:29:01,490 --> 00:29:08,940
Nature had done this drawing. He understood why it was the way it was, and he was entirely pleased.

226
00:29:08,940 --> 00:29:11,400
As was typical of Talbot, he put this away.

227
00:29:11,400 --> 00:29:19,260
He was very good at procrastinating, but he was also a very busy man, publishing quite a few more papers, some books.

228
00:29:19,260 --> 00:29:25,560
And along comes the year 1839, four years after this and in Paris,

229
00:29:25,560 --> 00:29:34,640
Louis-Jacques Monday together announced that he had found a way to capture and preserve the images in the camera obscura.

230
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:40,370
Talbot knew absolutely nothing about what these looked like, what they were.

231
00:29:40,370 --> 00:29:46,250
But here is somebody who has at least come up with the same idea.

232
00:29:46,250 --> 00:29:51,230
De Gea was very strongly supported in France.

233
00:29:51,230 --> 00:30:00,860
The academy you got behind him and his materials were first shown here in the academy's rooms very August,

234
00:30:00,860 --> 00:30:06,200
setting amongst the scientists promoted particularly by Francois Arugbo,

235
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:14,690
who at one time had been a friend of Talbot's but was very ambitious for French science at the time.

236
00:30:14,690 --> 00:30:24,920
Gilbert hastened to his friend Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution in London and on the 25th of January.

237
00:30:24,920 --> 00:30:30,590
He pulled things out of his old desk drawers. There wasn't anywhere near enough light to create anything new.

238
00:30:30,590 --> 00:30:38,660
But he drew out his several year old pictures and Faraday, after one of his popular Friday afternoon lectures,

239
00:30:38,660 --> 00:30:42,500
announced that there was a special exhibition in the library.

240
00:30:42,500 --> 00:30:53,060
And these were Talbot's earliest photographs that were shown to the public, as you can possibly see from the slide.

241
00:30:53,060 --> 00:30:58,040
It was a mixed audience, the royal institution very different from the academy.

242
00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:03,230
These cells from Paris Royal Institution did admit women.

243
00:31:03,230 --> 00:31:09,470
It did admit anybody who was good character and you simply needed to get a free ticket

244
00:31:09,470 --> 00:31:15,800
and come in to hear the lecture and see this surprising exhibition afterwards.

245
00:31:15,800 --> 00:31:21,470
And Faraday himself said that, you know, now that name game nature is our drawing mistress.

246
00:31:21,470 --> 00:31:25,760
He has no idea where this is going to go in the future.

247
00:31:25,760 --> 00:31:37,010
One of the things that we know that Tom showed at that exhibition was this little latticed window negative size of a postage stamp.

248
00:31:37,010 --> 00:31:44,060
And as you can see done with like Camera Obscura done in 1835.

249
00:31:44,060 --> 00:31:53,060
And he said with the aid of a glass, you count the panes of glass, the 200 divided panes of glass that were in that window.

250
00:31:53,060 --> 00:31:58,760
And you can still see them. This negative is still visible.

251
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:03,960
Fortunately, not shown very often, but it's the.

252
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:06,750
What is now the national media and science?

253
00:32:06,750 --> 00:32:15,720
National Science and Media Museum, you know, used to be the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television when Colin was in charge.

254
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:22,490
And they've sort of lost their way a little bit since, but they help preserve things like this.

255
00:32:22,490 --> 00:32:33,980
The daguerreotype is absolutely marvellous. I happen to know there's one degree of type caring person in this audience, but I shall forgive him.

256
00:32:33,980 --> 00:32:45,870
This is actually a John Ruskin daguerreotype done in Venice that's preserved in the Museum of History Science here right across the road.

257
00:32:45,870 --> 00:32:55,520
Daguerreotypes are an incredible experience. Is there anybody here who's not seen a daguerreotype?

258
00:32:55,520 --> 00:33:05,780
Only that's I'm glad I didn't see too many hands there, they're on a polished metal plate, their reflective silver plate.

259
00:33:05,780 --> 00:33:14,150
You need to get it at just the right angle and you actually reflect black into the reflective part of the play.

260
00:33:14,150 --> 00:33:21,050
And when you get it just right, the what is really a negative actually shows is lighter.

261
00:33:21,050 --> 00:33:35,960
And so it looks like a positive, very aethereal positive. It's best seen with a candle in a glass of red wine, maybe two glasses you could share,

262
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:40,610
but it's a very intimate experience and the way it was always meant to be,

263
00:33:40,610 --> 00:33:46,580
which is strange because Tiger was known as a showman and known as a public entertainer.

264
00:33:46,580 --> 00:33:53,110
Yet he created this most intensely personal of all image making devices.

265
00:33:53,110 --> 00:34:04,840
The daguerreotype had limitations. I don't remember his name anymore, but this one very patient porter at the Science Museum London in the basement,

266
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:10,030
who dragged out this large daguerreotype, this is a sheet of silver plated copper.

267
00:34:10,030 --> 00:34:18,180
So not only is it very expensive, but I imagine he was grunting a little bit as he was holding this.

268
00:34:18,180 --> 00:34:28,290
Tolbert, on the other hand, had created his negatives, as will now call them, on sheets of paper, which are very versatile and portable.

269
00:34:28,290 --> 00:34:36,330
And as I said, he knew early on that he could take another sensitive sheet and return that negative back to being a positive.

270
00:34:36,330 --> 00:34:43,170
He just simply saw no need to do so until he started giving away all his seed corn in 1839.

271
00:34:43,170 --> 00:34:47,700
These negatives became very popular and everybody wanted one,

272
00:34:47,700 --> 00:34:55,280
and he soon realised he had to start making prints in multiples in order to preserve his stock.

273
00:34:55,280 --> 00:34:59,840
He did begin to see them convinced the spruce needles.

274
00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:08,000
These are static on a sheet of paper. It's a photograph. But that cascade, I'm sure it was not accidental.

275
00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:14,450
He observed that and observed that he could add emotion into his pictures.

276
00:35:14,450 --> 00:35:22,100
And here we have that same window that we saw that little purple negative. But notice now it's not just a flat on view of the window.

277
00:35:22,100 --> 00:35:29,360
He's created a photographic space using the camera, a three dimensionality to this.

278
00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:39,350
And you know, it was growing in his vision. Tolbert was the first artist to be taught by photography, and he had a long ways to go.

279
00:35:39,350 --> 00:35:48,990
And he covered quite a lot of ground. By that, autumn digger had received all sorts of public accolades.

280
00:35:48,990 --> 00:35:56,500
Tolbert had absolutely miserable support from the scientific community in Britain.

281
00:35:56,500 --> 00:36:04,130
And largely withdrew into himself, this is a picture he took in November of 1839, first year,

282
00:36:04,130 --> 00:36:12,770
the end of that first summer in a study and a place that he is in a world here that's familiar with whom there are objects,

283
00:36:12,770 --> 00:36:19,600
art and particularly the books that were the realm of his imagination.

284
00:36:19,600 --> 00:36:27,160
And this is probably to be generous half hour, maybe an hour's exposure.

285
00:36:27,160 --> 00:36:32,410
It's somewhat softened by the angle of light changing in the shadows changing,

286
00:36:32,410 --> 00:36:39,010
but a marvellous record of where he was over the winter when there was no light.

287
00:36:39,010 --> 00:36:52,270
Hardly. He kept thinking about what photography was and what it could do, and how he could improve what he was doing and come the spring of 1840.

288
00:36:52,270 --> 00:37:02,650
He's sufficiently improved his chemistry that he was able to start taking relatively large hole plate camera obscura pictures.

289
00:37:02,650 --> 00:37:06,850
This is his sisters would go with she.

290
00:37:06,850 --> 00:37:13,030
I have strength in this. This is the way it is now. It would have been, of course, much bolder.

291
00:37:13,030 --> 00:37:20,470
Back at the time, this is a negative that was created entirely with the energy of light.

292
00:37:20,470 --> 00:37:26,230
There's no developing involved. When he took it out of the camera, it was as strong as he would ever be.

293
00:37:26,230 --> 00:37:34,510
And then he made it print another negative from that spring of 1840 from foraging ink drawing, as he called it.

294
00:37:34,510 --> 00:37:42,100
Again, this is strictly solar energy a negative now the Getty still in marvellous nick.

295
00:37:42,100 --> 00:37:46,030
And you can see here that he's observing this wall,

296
00:37:46,030 --> 00:37:51,850
which actually isn't very ancient but appears to be and the reflection off the shovel

297
00:37:51,850 --> 00:38:02,490
blade and the composition of the room in that he's beginning to see photographically.

298
00:38:02,490 --> 00:38:08,670
During his experiments that year, he stumbled across something.

299
00:38:08,670 --> 00:38:14,100
In September of 1840, he took a failed experiment.

300
00:38:14,100 --> 00:38:25,370
A negative out of the camera wasn't exposed enough, threw it on the table, went off to get tea, or so the story goes and came back.

301
00:38:25,370 --> 00:38:30,770
It was stunned to find an image there. And he is very analytical.

302
00:38:30,770 --> 00:38:36,620
He went through why this could have happened because he knew it was a blank sheet of paper before,

303
00:38:36,620 --> 00:38:41,530
and he realised he had left the chemical in that paper.

304
00:38:41,530 --> 00:38:51,940
He immediately went to his notes and actually physically cut out the chemical because he didn't want this information to fall into the wrong hands.

305
00:38:51,940 --> 00:39:06,490
The chemicals Gallic acid. Made from goals, trees, it provided a chemical developer, how many of you worked in a wet, dark room?

306
00:39:06,490 --> 00:39:17,190
Oh, good. I feel much better. That can be depressing in some audiences when nobody touches you because you don't

307
00:39:17,190 --> 00:39:22,350
know if they've fallen asleep or if they've simply been deprived of that experience.

308
00:39:22,350 --> 00:39:32,250
Perhaps some of you haven't seen the film blow up, which you know the magic of putting this piece of paper in the pan.

309
00:39:32,250 --> 00:39:37,320
Apparently, blank piece of paper and watching it come up and gain strength.

310
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:41,250
And if you're lucky, it gains a certain amount of strength and stops.

311
00:39:41,250 --> 00:39:48,440
Sometimes it overshoots, but I don't know how many thousands of prints I've made in my life and.

312
00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:52,640
I don't get the opportunity to do it anymore, but the magic was still there.

313
00:39:52,640 --> 00:40:00,610
And number four, 4000 or whatever of seeing this image emerge out of nothingness.

314
00:40:00,610 --> 00:40:06,670
Using this process, he greatly shortened his exposure times.

315
00:40:06,670 --> 00:40:17,530
And in November of 1840, set up what I think is one of the most extraordinary images the Great Hall of Leacock.

316
00:40:17,530 --> 00:40:22,330
Huckabee has all of these little terracotta figures set into niches.

317
00:40:22,330 --> 00:40:31,090
And what you're seeing here is a pattern of light coming through the front windows tracing across Diogenes.

318
00:40:31,090 --> 00:40:38,830
One of these terracotta figure, the, of course, the man who is using light to search for truth.

319
00:40:38,830 --> 00:40:41,770
I've been in here.

320
00:40:41,770 --> 00:40:53,230
Having a gin and tonic, frankly, I've been there at the end of the day when Nash stressed visitors have cleared out and just with the family.

321
00:40:53,230 --> 00:41:00,730
And this picture exists for maybe a minute as the Sun is setting.

322
00:41:00,730 --> 00:41:10,630
I guess is Trump would have it as the Sun is rotating that races across room, you can actually watch it move.

323
00:41:10,630 --> 00:41:19,870
And here he is within a matter of a few seconds at most able to capture this very sophisticated image.

324
00:41:19,870 --> 00:41:26,390
In November of 1840. If photography had stopped at that point,

325
00:41:26,390 --> 00:41:38,600
I would have been content because he he obviously now understood the power of having nature do these drawings for him using this developed negative,

326
00:41:38,600 --> 00:41:44,660
this collar type negative. He greatly expanded his range of subject matter.

327
00:41:44,660 --> 00:41:53,260
This is in London. This is his mediaeval view of London.

328
00:41:53,260 --> 00:42:04,810
This is that magic little slop time when the Houses of Parliament have burned and before the new ones before Putin puts them up.

329
00:42:04,810 --> 00:42:11,200
And so we see Westminster here as it was meant to be seen when it was built.

330
00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:14,800
It's dominating the landscape very soon.

331
00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:19,510
Big Ben is going to go up and compete with it, and you'll never see this again.

332
00:42:19,510 --> 00:42:23,710
You also see all of the busy commerce of the river.

333
00:42:23,710 --> 00:42:30,850
This is in June of 1840, and he rented rooms.

334
00:42:30,850 --> 00:42:36,490
I sort of Bill, he rented rooms. The software notice came up again,

335
00:42:36,490 --> 00:42:49,150
so he rented rooms right near where the Showmax building is now for those familiar with London and took the series of photographs.

336
00:42:49,150 --> 00:42:54,770
Very extraordinary. The catalogue raisonné.

337
00:42:54,770 --> 00:43:00,690
Is meant to gather together all the various iterations of these photographs.

338
00:43:00,690 --> 00:43:11,390
They're organised around something in modestly called shots numbers, but each distinct image has its own unique number.

339
00:43:11,390 --> 00:43:20,930
So if it's represented by only a negative that has a unique number, if there's a negative and one print, they will share a number.

340
00:43:20,930 --> 00:43:32,330
If there's a negative and 40 prints, they will share numbers so you can use the catalogue raisonné to gather together these different iterations.

341
00:43:32,330 --> 00:43:46,120
This is just showing a fragment of a screen of no car clue where there's quite a number of them scattered around the world in various forms.

342
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:52,670
This is why I'm confident I will always stay ahead of Cameron, at least in account.

343
00:43:52,670 --> 00:43:56,810
And this is an example you can select on the catalogue raisonné,

344
00:43:56,810 --> 00:44:09,070
you can hover over any one example after you see this gallery of examples and pick out one that you want to to look at more closely.

345
00:44:09,070 --> 00:44:15,290
The photographs themselves often carry information. So this is on the verso.

346
00:44:15,290 --> 00:44:24,970
One of them you can see very clearly in his own hand is dated it, which is very useful because we can then relate that to the manuscript material.

347
00:44:24,970 --> 00:44:31,540
Sometimes he gives us enough technical information.

348
00:44:31,540 --> 00:44:40,630
These colours are the natural colours silver is going to produce, by the way the the the yellow and the purple, or just different ways of processing.

349
00:44:40,630 --> 00:44:50,670
And we have here his experimental notes and what he was doing.

350
00:44:50,670 --> 00:45:01,360
There are sometimes things that we can see. These are two negatives, obviously, of the same specimen,

351
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:11,350
so they were made clearly not too far apart because that that pork plant is going to to get tired doing that.

352
00:45:11,350 --> 00:45:24,130
I won't mention the name of the museum, but the one on the right is in a famous museum that's up on a hill in Los Angeles,

353
00:45:24,130 --> 00:45:29,770
and the one on the left is right across the street in museum history.

354
00:45:29,770 --> 00:45:38,350
Science one The left was presented to Sir John Herschel by Talbot and then preserved here.

355
00:45:38,350 --> 00:45:47,320
Some of you will not be shocked that I had a contentious discussion with the then curator at that museum on the Hill,

356
00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:53,210
who was convinced that there was earlier because it was better or.

357
00:45:53,210 --> 00:45:57,470
Some thinking of that sort, I'm not sure I follow it.

358
00:45:57,470 --> 00:46:01,940
However, we have, sorry, a bit awkward here.

359
00:46:01,940 --> 00:46:07,330
We have the evidence. Well, oops, I broke it there.

360
00:46:07,330 --> 00:46:15,180
We have the evidence here. A relief that fell off.

361
00:46:15,180 --> 00:46:25,090
So clearly, the one across the street was done first and the argument.

362
00:46:25,090 --> 00:46:31,330
There are other little things these negatives were on paper,

363
00:46:31,330 --> 00:46:42,590
and they were trimmed by hand with a pair of scissors and so occasionally if you look in the upper right corner here.

364
00:46:42,590 --> 00:46:46,790
I think I'm hearing it. You look in the upper right corner.

365
00:46:46,790 --> 00:46:54,380
You can see where there's a little snag in the paper trimming and the negative that broke off.

366
00:46:54,380 --> 00:46:56,450
So I can't tell you exactly when,

367
00:46:56,450 --> 00:47:04,280
but I can tell you that the print on the left was made first when the negative still had that little stub of paper accidentally,

368
00:47:04,280 --> 00:47:09,180
which then broke off before the one on the right was made.

369
00:47:09,180 --> 00:47:16,710
Since these are trimmed by hand, an important clue for me is the photographer of the negative.

370
00:47:16,710 --> 00:47:22,530
They are never perfect rectangles as we've come to expect materials now.

371
00:47:22,530 --> 00:47:29,280
And so by following that wandering each, I used to take very detailed notes on, you know,

372
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:35,190
two mm bump at the lower left corner, that sort of thing, the way the corners are clipped.

373
00:47:35,190 --> 00:47:42,730
We can batch up a negative with a print. So in this case, we have a negative that has a date on it.

374
00:47:42,730 --> 00:47:46,600
But it's totally blank, it's faded, have a clue what it is.

375
00:47:46,600 --> 00:47:57,100
And that's in Washington. But we have a print that's in South Africa that very clearly shows what the subject matter was.

376
00:47:57,100 --> 00:48:01,450
So that negative now by matching these up in the catalogue raisonné,

377
00:48:01,450 --> 00:48:13,750
that negative informs us of the date of the print, and the print in turn informs us of the content of the negative.

378
00:48:13,750 --> 00:48:19,150
And occasionally, rarely we have cases where he made.

379
00:48:19,150 --> 00:48:22,570
I'm going to assume aesthetic decisions.

380
00:48:22,570 --> 00:48:32,530
The upper left is the negative as it now exists and below it in brown is a print typical of the prints made from that negative.

381
00:48:32,530 --> 00:48:37,060
You can see that they match up in outline perfectly.

382
00:48:37,060 --> 00:48:45,200
But then there's one surviving print. On the right that was printed before the negative was chopped down.

383
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:51,260
And so we have much more foreground area, which is not particularly defective,

384
00:48:51,260 --> 00:48:57,820
I think that he made an aesthetic choice here that he preferred the tighter cropping.

385
00:48:57,820 --> 00:49:01,840
We can also using the catalogue raisonné, line up similar subjects,

386
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:09,970
and so the bust of Patroclus that he had this plaster bust is very reflective, very patient centre.

387
00:49:09,970 --> 00:49:16,730
He photographed many, many times because it modulated light beautifully.

388
00:49:16,730 --> 00:49:25,010
You've got one here, don't you? Yeah. The.

389
00:49:25,010 --> 00:49:32,510
This is made from. One of the tumbling marbles in the British Museum.

390
00:49:32,510 --> 00:49:38,060
I don't know exactly when Typekit got about 18, 20, when I first went after them,

391
00:49:38,060 --> 00:49:44,670
they still had within their curatorial department the ability to make plaster busts.

392
00:49:44,670 --> 00:49:53,330
And we located the original horse here, mould that I'm sure is the same one that Talbot was made from.

393
00:49:53,330 --> 00:50:06,930
Not great, and I asked for a copy, and then they closed that department and turned it over to British Museum DLC or something like that.

394
00:50:06,930 --> 00:50:16,360
Who, first of all, proceeded to break the original mould. So they're going to some of the romance, but then I ask you to make another mole?

395
00:50:16,360 --> 00:50:27,700
They did. And they shipped over chocolates eventually to the states in a box that was maybe two centimetres larger than the plaster bust.

396
00:50:27,700 --> 00:50:32,740
So I had to head to the spiritual cliffs. And.

397
00:50:32,740 --> 00:50:37,510
They did this three times, shows the economy of privatising things.

398
00:50:37,510 --> 00:50:42,730
They did this three times, ship it over in a box, it was only slightly larger.

399
00:50:42,730 --> 00:50:47,260
So the Petroleos I eventually had. Who is that?

400
00:50:47,260 --> 00:50:53,590
Rock House now in Baltimore, is missing a few locks of hair, but largely intact.

401
00:50:53,590 --> 00:51:02,330
And your Petroleos was made from that same new mould.

402
00:51:02,330 --> 00:51:08,570
You can see here how it's a hand brushed sheet of paper, each coated the materials on there.

403
00:51:08,570 --> 00:51:17,270
This is one Patroclus. Here's another where he set him up outdoors in order to take advantage of the light.

404
00:51:17,270 --> 00:51:21,860
The catalogue raisonné has several components to it,

405
00:51:21,860 --> 00:51:31,070
and there is a search mechanism where you can go in and say you're interested in vitro clips or whatever it might be.

406
00:51:31,070 --> 00:51:35,900
It also had a couple of other major components.

407
00:51:35,900 --> 00:51:44,720
One is about the project, which has supplemental material a biography of Talbott, who is tall but not foxtail.

408
00:51:44,720 --> 00:52:03,570
But. But I'll let you go to the website and figure out that there is also weekly a blog which Thaddeus Levinsky, where are you there?

409
00:52:03,570 --> 00:52:10,170
One hundred and eighty two weekly blocks ago, am I correct in one hundred and eighty two weekly blogs ago,

410
00:52:10,170 --> 00:52:14,550
I was getting a little frustrated that some technical snags.

411
00:52:14,550 --> 00:52:21,770
And so I started doing a blog. As it turns out, every week calls it the damn blog,

412
00:52:21,770 --> 00:52:30,500
which explore different aspects of Torbett and of the catalogue raisonné, and these are still online, you can go.

413
00:52:30,500 --> 00:52:37,050
And there's a good search mechanism that goes with that.

414
00:52:37,050 --> 00:52:44,650
There's some photographs that we understand how they came about.

415
00:52:44,650 --> 00:52:54,190
Again, the museum in Los Angeles, that curator was convinced that this was the head of Christ, but lacking the necessary accoutrements.

416
00:52:54,190 --> 00:53:03,310
It's the head of an unknown saint. We don't have any spheres or anything like that to figure out who he was.

417
00:53:03,310 --> 00:53:07,300
But you know, why would Talbot do something like this?

418
00:53:07,300 --> 00:53:18,220
And for years and years and years, when I visit Leacock Abbey, Anthony Brown, the descendant was very, very patient with my continuing requests.

419
00:53:18,220 --> 00:53:22,540
And finally, one day he triumphantly pulled out of his desk drawer.

420
00:53:22,540 --> 00:53:30,580
This little painted glass and I had asked him about this again and again because I could never find it in the windows at my cock.

421
00:53:30,580 --> 00:53:36,400
And thankfully, it was preserved and it is still preserved.

422
00:53:36,400 --> 00:53:41,710
The Talbot was interested in what colour would do, what light would do,

423
00:53:41,710 --> 00:53:52,130
and so he was using that painted glass not to record a saint, but instead to see what effect the different colours had.

424
00:53:52,130 --> 00:54:00,900
Also with the catalogue raisonné by lining up these different examples here we have.

425
00:54:00,900 --> 00:54:07,920
The wood cutters, as it's popularly known, Nicole Hinman, who will come back to you in a moment,

426
00:54:07,920 --> 00:54:19,740
and William Pullen cleaving and chopping wood, and we can see from one surviving print notice the foreground from one surviving print.

427
00:54:19,740 --> 00:54:26,040
There were defects or shadows in the foreground that Talbot obviously decided to clear up.

428
00:54:26,040 --> 00:54:33,470
So he just got out of the scissors and chopped off the negative. And made the print.

429
00:54:33,470 --> 00:54:46,690
There are pictures that were initially inexplicable, you know, here we have a hand very evocative in many ways, but cut off at the wrist.

430
00:54:46,690 --> 00:54:58,090
What does this mean? And of course, there's a long tradition of recording hands, you know, going back to prehistoric times.

431
00:54:58,090 --> 00:55:08,050
But as we find here was, in fact, a photograph not of a life hand, but of a plaster cast of one of his sisters hands,

432
00:55:08,050 --> 00:55:18,670
which Richard now has in his collection almost didn't get because the widow felt it was a bit creepy,

433
00:55:18,670 --> 00:55:25,610
but was persuaded finally, and that hand is now preserved here.

434
00:55:25,610 --> 00:55:30,810
There are other things that I had pestered Anthony about finding.

435
00:55:30,810 --> 00:55:44,070
This is a new politan carriage that Talbot liked to photograph a painting never quite understood why,

436
00:55:44,070 --> 00:55:53,820
except that he had been to Naples many times before photography, and this is obviously a souvenir painting that they had brought it back at some time.

437
00:55:53,820 --> 00:56:02,730
So I kept pestering Anthony trip after trip in one time, very triumphantly, I think pulled out of the old brewery.

438
00:56:02,730 --> 00:56:11,130
He pulls out this painting, had a hole in it, have been somewhat affected by time, but there was the original.

439
00:56:11,130 --> 00:56:17,850
Again, I'm sure that Talbot was interested in how colours were reproduced and what that would do.

440
00:56:17,850 --> 00:56:27,100
And that painting has now been conserved and is here again at the Bosnian.

441
00:56:27,100 --> 00:56:37,270
I call these his peripatetic shells. He photographed out in the cloisters of Laycock Abbey in order to take advantage of natural light.

442
00:56:37,270 --> 00:56:40,750
And he had these temporary shelves that he set up out there,

443
00:56:40,750 --> 00:56:47,290
sometimes two three four with black velvet or something draped over them so

444
00:56:47,290 --> 00:56:52,180
that he could take advantage of the sunlight and take the various photographs.

445
00:56:52,180 --> 00:57:03,060
So again, in the catalogue raisonné, we can pull together things that use the same shelves, but our different objects.

446
00:57:03,060 --> 00:57:15,210
Not everything went according to plan. And here he's still in with books, but now has zeroed in on the bindings.

447
00:57:15,210 --> 00:57:23,320
And so again, in the catalogue, you can look up books or bindings and gather these various thoughts together.

448
00:57:23,320 --> 00:57:32,710
Articles of Glass. He was fascinated with because glass, of course, modulates light.

449
00:57:32,710 --> 00:57:39,760
Anybody else hear that? Thank you. I was beginning to think it was crazy that it's giving me these little warnings.

450
00:57:39,760 --> 00:57:47,230
It doesn't like the software, which I'm not responsible for the articles of Glass.

451
00:57:47,230 --> 00:57:59,580
He was fascinated with how it modulated light. What I would love to do when Photoshop two comes out, as, you know, cut glass like that,

452
00:57:59,580 --> 00:58:04,650
there is going to be all sorts of little images of the photographer reflected in there.

453
00:58:04,650 --> 00:58:09,960
And so we have dozens, maybe hundreds of portraits of Henry Talbot here.

454
00:58:09,960 --> 00:58:18,600
It's just we can't quite fish them out yet, but hopefully someday some of that glass survived.

455
00:58:18,600 --> 00:58:33,110
It again is now here at the Bodleian and has been used to make modern photographs to evoke Colbert's work.

456
00:58:33,110 --> 00:58:41,150
And again, within this, we just can't see them, but Henry is there and I want to see him someday.

457
00:58:41,150 --> 00:58:49,840
He's got to be in there somewhere. Articles of China, which she observed.

458
00:58:49,840 --> 00:58:58,690
Worked very differently from Glass, because China, of course, doesn't reflect reflect the light, it reflects the light only.

459
00:58:58,690 --> 00:59:07,660
And so here we have that same set of shelves that dress basket, amazing lacy baskets still survived.

460
00:59:07,660 --> 00:59:13,600
Still in the. Roger? Yeah, yeah. I'm amazed that it did.

461
00:59:13,600 --> 00:59:19,390
He talked about how this could be used to catalogue a collectors collection

462
00:59:19,390 --> 00:59:26,350
and might someday be a novel argument in court if something were purloined.

463
00:59:26,350 --> 00:59:38,150
Some of the China was purloined from Mike Huckabee in the 50s, but nothing that they could prove photographically articles of silver.

464
00:59:38,150 --> 00:59:51,870
Had a different lighting challenge. But using the catalogue raisonné, we can bring all these things that share a common environment together.

465
00:59:51,870 --> 00:59:59,880
He was like, I said, beginning to see photographically. I think your first reaction of this is of spaciousness.

466
00:59:59,880 --> 01:00:02,650
You know, there's a sense of the great outdoors.

467
01:00:02,650 --> 01:00:11,610
In fact, this is a little stew pond where the nuns kept their fish for dinner and the cameras on the ground.

468
01:00:11,610 --> 01:00:16,380
And those grand trees back there, probably smaller than I am.

469
01:00:16,380 --> 01:00:22,200
But by virtue of that very little angle where Anthony had to go out and as well.

470
01:00:22,200 --> 01:00:26,040
And you know, we traipsed around trying to recreate the single until it finally occurred to me.

471
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:36,630
If you put the camera on the ground. There you go. Photographic portraiture is something that.

472
01:00:36,630 --> 01:00:44,100
I'm going to say has been debased, the selfie phenomena, all of you have a camera in your pocket,

473
01:00:44,100 --> 01:00:48,390
I don't know how many selfies you've taken today, and I'm not interested.

474
01:00:48,390 --> 01:00:57,150
But you know, we take so many portraits now that they really have been rendered fairly meaningless.

475
01:00:57,150 --> 01:01:05,590
Go back to the 1870s, this tintype. There's the child with her doll, that's understandable.

476
01:01:05,590 --> 01:01:16,600
And the mother in her invisibility cloak, who knows we can't see her, that we can see only her child, that she's holding very patiently.

477
01:01:16,600 --> 01:01:22,450
But imagine back in 1840. When?

478
01:01:22,450 --> 01:01:28,010
You might have a portrait painted during your lifetime, maybe a couple.

479
01:01:28,010 --> 01:01:38,720
Here is his wife, Constance, 30, second exposure in 1840, and he's able to capture the countenance of his wife.

480
01:01:38,720 --> 01:01:46,960
Very, very special thing to do and unheard of in any other medium.

481
01:01:46,960 --> 01:01:55,630
And not only. Of his wife, but of his wife and children gathered together.

482
01:01:55,630 --> 01:02:04,060
Posed probably for 30 seconds, you know, very consciously with their knees in the right place and so on.

483
01:02:04,060 --> 01:02:13,580
But still an incredible thing. Oops, I'm sorry, and this amazing picture at Laycock of his wife and three.

484
01:02:13,580 --> 01:02:20,790
Daughters at the time. I'm reading that wrong.

485
01:02:20,790 --> 01:02:27,810
That's us. No, that's my wife and three daughters, his one son was not yet born.

486
01:02:27,810 --> 01:02:34,800
And here they are in this incredible what we now call a snapshot a term that had not

487
01:02:34,800 --> 01:02:41,010
yet been applied by Sir John Herschel and within obviously very short exposure,

488
01:02:41,010 --> 01:02:49,950
judging by the sharpness of the shadows, a matter of seconds able to capture this family scene.

489
01:02:49,950 --> 01:03:02,940
And here again in London, capturing on the River Thames during the same period, something that would not have been depicted otherwise.

490
01:03:02,940 --> 01:03:09,230
Nelson's monument. In Trafalgar Square.

491
01:03:09,230 --> 01:03:16,370
The. Why take a picture of a monument without the monument?

492
01:03:16,370 --> 01:03:26,300
I'm sure that he was fascinated by this space. Trafalgar Square was the first public space to be opened in a major city in Europe because,

493
01:03:26,300 --> 01:03:31,610
as you know, the 1840s were a bit turbulent and they were concerned about it.

494
01:03:31,610 --> 01:03:37,880
The the big fountains where you feed the pigeons, there were not amenities.

495
01:03:37,880 --> 01:03:40,280
Originally, they were designed to break up crowds.

496
01:03:40,280 --> 01:03:51,890
There were crowd control feature, and you can see here that he is concentrating on the base of this, which is under construction,

497
01:03:51,890 --> 01:04:01,230
quite controversially ignoring the monument itself, which would have actually been put up yet by this point.

498
01:04:01,230 --> 01:04:05,920
And what I think is really wonderful.

499
01:04:05,920 --> 01:04:18,010
If you see post no bills and of course, it's by the illegally posted bills, we can actually date this within a very specific time slot within a week.

500
01:04:18,010 --> 01:04:29,900
By looking at the various train timetables in the theatre announcements and that we can take this very, very precisely.

501
01:04:29,900 --> 01:04:41,000
This is in France in 1843. He and his assistant, Nicolas honeymooned, went off to France to photograph in the garage on home turf.

502
01:04:41,000 --> 01:04:46,850
Marvellous view through their window, it ran looking at the curtains again,

503
01:04:46,850 --> 01:04:53,090
the kind of image that he wouldn't even have seen much less been able to record before.

504
01:04:53,090 --> 01:04:59,000
But photography has taught him to see the sort of thing.

505
01:04:59,000 --> 01:05:05,420
Now, an important thing to realise about photography at this point is everything is handmade.

506
01:05:05,420 --> 01:05:13,080
There's no. Buying Kodak or for paper or anything like that, everything is made by hand.

507
01:05:13,080 --> 01:05:23,700
How many of you have made your own pasta? OK, the rest of you, you have an assignment.

508
01:05:23,700 --> 01:05:31,020
Pastor, to me is very much like these early photographs. It's superficially very simple.

509
01:05:31,020 --> 01:05:38,750
You make it Mount Vesuvius flower. You break some eggs into the crater.

510
01:05:38,750 --> 01:05:42,200
Controversially, add water. I don't.

511
01:05:42,200 --> 01:05:49,770
And controversially, you'd add salt, which I bought and salted water, but I don't like the effect of banning it beforehand.

512
01:05:49,770 --> 01:05:54,680
But basically, it's eggs and flour, and that's it.

513
01:05:54,680 --> 01:06:00,950
And and then you roll it out.

514
01:06:00,950 --> 01:06:08,470
Don't ask me why, but going to Rome. One of making my own pasta.

515
01:06:08,470 --> 01:06:13,680
Calls to Newcastle, certainly, and you can see there are the eggs.

516
01:06:13,680 --> 01:06:17,630
The salt that I'm not going to use until I boil it.

517
01:06:17,630 --> 01:06:29,480
The flour and the necessary lubricant for the cook that has to be there, but that serves another function.

518
01:06:29,480 --> 01:06:40,210
Because they found that there were no specific tools for geography, you had to drop things from other areas.

519
01:06:40,210 --> 01:06:48,540
And so roll it out and we have our pasta. You can use a pasta machine.

520
01:06:48,540 --> 01:06:54,090
And you will get under the rule and probably your dinner guests will be satisfied.

521
01:06:54,090 --> 01:07:02,850
But pasta is something that requires your fingers rather than your head, and you need to feel what that dough is doing.

522
01:07:02,850 --> 01:07:09,390
And of course, eggs vary in their moisture content, and flour varies in its age and growing conditions.

523
01:07:09,390 --> 01:07:15,270
And you literally balance those with your fingers until you get just the right one.

524
01:07:15,270 --> 01:07:19,430
And that's a difference in homemade pasta is it's going to be better.

525
01:07:19,430 --> 01:07:30,960
Then it comes out of a machine. Talbot's fingers were well-trained in making photographic materials, so he wasn't keeping back secrets from people.

526
01:07:30,960 --> 01:07:36,660
He just simply didn't quite know everything that his fingers knew about what he was doing.

527
01:07:36,660 --> 01:07:48,880
But he tried to get the information out the best he could. When things went well, this is the haystack.

528
01:07:48,880 --> 01:07:53,830
They went incredibly well. You can see here the shadow of the ladder.

529
01:07:53,830 --> 01:07:59,680
I'm sure that he moved the ladder in order to put the shadow in just the right position.

530
01:07:59,680 --> 01:08:06,700
And you can see the cleaving knife there that will eventually be used to cut up the haystack.

531
01:08:06,700 --> 01:08:12,990
One scholar said that that cleaving knife symbolised the early death of each of its children.

532
01:08:12,990 --> 01:08:21,040
It's something I've never understood because they all lived to maturity, unusually so much for academia.

533
01:08:21,040 --> 01:08:30,610
But that is from the original negative, which is absolutely gorgeous and in your collection, a budget.

534
01:08:30,610 --> 01:08:38,050
If you know any picture from generic art history, it's the open door here.

535
01:08:38,050 --> 01:08:45,550
A splendid early prints you can see it was encoded print made by top it himself, I'm sure.

536
01:08:45,550 --> 01:08:56,070
And this is of interest because it's one of the few times we can actually document the evolution of an idea.

537
01:08:56,070 --> 01:09:06,330
This is something his mother originally titled The Slope of the Broom, you can see from 1841 rather ratty broom.

538
01:09:06,330 --> 01:09:14,820
Same general composition, same open-door, same lights through their same lines and that around there,

539
01:09:14,820 --> 01:09:22,570
but this probably wouldn't have made the art history books. And then we jump to 1843.

540
01:09:22,570 --> 01:09:33,020
Brooms got no better. And another one from 1843.

541
01:09:33,020 --> 01:09:39,470
He's now got a clearer idea of the function of that window that you see through there that light,

542
01:09:39,470 --> 01:09:47,180
and he's beginning to take better advantage of that, but really needs a new broom.

543
01:09:47,180 --> 01:09:54,540
And he hasn't figured out the angles or anything here, but he stuck with it.

544
01:09:54,540 --> 01:10:00,850
And here in March of 43, he's changing the angles some.

545
01:10:00,850 --> 01:10:10,010
And he's got a better broom, finally. So he's beginning to pull this picture together.

546
01:10:10,010 --> 01:10:18,550
And we see here from the 1st of March 1843, I'm sorry.

547
01:10:18,550 --> 01:10:25,940
You see this area right here, that door. And you might notice a little diagonal line on that.

548
01:10:25,940 --> 01:10:32,090
Well, we can use the catalogue raisonné to line that up with the date.

549
01:10:32,090 --> 01:10:38,840
Here. And I will use Photoshop for a change here.

550
01:10:38,840 --> 01:10:50,380
We have. His camera was a dark cloth draped over it on a stand tripod, photographing that room in the open door.

551
01:10:50,380 --> 01:11:00,480
And it's very unusual for any work of art to have this series like this leads up to it.

552
01:11:00,480 --> 01:11:06,530
He didn't quite get it here, but this is negative that matches up.

553
01:11:06,530 --> 01:11:19,870
With that. And then finally, in 1844, he pulls the idea together, and we now have this incredible negative.

554
01:11:19,870 --> 01:11:33,110
With light through there, with the surroundings, with the broom and notice the shadow of the broom handle very critical part of this composition.

555
01:11:33,110 --> 01:11:42,100
It was in your damn collection one time I was sitting there looking at a whole bunch of open doors, which I looked at many times and had not.

556
01:11:42,100 --> 01:11:47,260
It was no longer seeing it. You know, it was just too common to me as good a picture as it was.

557
01:11:47,260 --> 01:11:52,840
And then out of this whole stack of prints, suddenly the shadow moved.

558
01:11:52,840 --> 01:11:58,240
And clearly there were two negatives shot moments apart.

559
01:11:58,240 --> 01:12:06,310
The angles on it changed a little bit, and he generally chose the more brownish ones of this one on the left,

560
01:12:06,310 --> 01:12:16,160
which I think is a stronger composition with that larger triangle. But you can see where both of them tied together.

561
01:12:16,160 --> 01:12:30,950
His. Assistant was originally a valet at Lake Huckabee, and when told, was working prior to 1839, I'm sure Nicholas Cinnamon,

562
01:12:30,950 --> 01:12:37,610
a Dutchman, helped him out a great deal of nothing else running out and getting water and such.

563
01:12:37,610 --> 01:12:45,440
And Herman came so in transfer photography that quite unusually, he suffered service would top it.

564
01:12:45,440 --> 01:12:54,320
And in 1843 went off to the nearby market town of Redding and set up his own teletype establishment.

565
01:12:54,320 --> 01:13:03,440
Very brave thing to do, because if you were a servant, once you didn't steal the silver or impregnate the daughter, you had a job for life.

566
01:13:03,440 --> 01:13:09,040
And he left that job because he believed in photography so much.

567
01:13:09,040 --> 01:13:20,050
And. The idea was to promote photography, not only to take photographs, but also to sell materials.

568
01:13:20,050 --> 01:13:25,180
Talbot gave him his first big printing assignment and that was sure making the book The of Nature,

569
01:13:25,180 --> 01:13:30,490
which was issued serially in parts, had original silver prints set up.

570
01:13:30,490 --> 01:13:42,160
There was no way to reproduce them otherwise. But each of these parts you would buy from a bookseller would have some original Talbot prints in there.

571
01:13:42,160 --> 01:13:50,190
The very first one. Is appropriately a view here in Oxford, part of Queens College.

572
01:13:50,190 --> 01:13:55,710
The church now has become a library for college.

573
01:13:55,710 --> 01:14:05,290
The groom that he took this from a first floor room was above a marmalade shop.

574
01:14:05,290 --> 01:14:09,610
I think that has changed now. Hasn't that cafe cafe now? OK.

575
01:14:09,610 --> 01:14:19,260
But. Largely, you could do the same picture today, except he observed that the stone was of miserable quality and the stone was falling apart.

576
01:14:19,260 --> 01:14:23,700
So when I was first looking for this, when I first came here.

577
01:14:23,700 --> 01:14:29,760
I had this weird time warp, because in the 1950s, they finally got around Oxford, never quick.

578
01:14:29,760 --> 01:14:36,810
They finally got around to facing the stone. So it looks newer today than it looked until this date.

579
01:14:36,810 --> 01:14:40,890
But look at this picture and look how photographic this is.

580
01:14:40,890 --> 01:14:50,440
And especially, you know, the dominant part of this picture is the shadow is quite unapologetically saying this is photography.

581
01:14:50,440 --> 01:14:55,540
You know, you wouldn't do an engraving or print that way.

582
01:14:55,540 --> 01:15:01,810
That wouldn't be your subject. You probably wouldn't even include the little coffeehouse on the right.

583
01:15:01,810 --> 01:15:05,410
But you certainly wouldn't let the chateau dominate.

584
01:15:05,410 --> 01:15:14,440
But photography was so new that starting with the second party had to put a notice into the reader that these are original sun pictures,

585
01:15:14,440 --> 01:15:25,810
not engravings and imitation, but these are the original things. Now, when Talbott was working at Lake Huckabee, he had ample resources.

586
01:15:25,810 --> 01:15:28,540
He had enough money for materials.

587
01:15:28,540 --> 01:15:38,560
He had enough money to heat the water to effectively wash the prince, and he could choose to print on days when there was good sunshine.

588
01:15:38,560 --> 01:15:44,860
So if you see the three little dots there, right in the middle with the gentleman,

589
01:15:44,860 --> 01:15:53,600
he's out on the south side of Lake Cathy, printing in the ample sunshine on a day that he chose to print.

590
01:15:53,600 --> 01:16:02,420
Confusingly, or I suppose, understandably, his notes are an alternate days, so if it was rainy, he would write in his notebooks.

591
01:16:02,420 --> 01:16:10,340
And if it was sunny and pretty well, predict the weather now. But whether or not this notebook entry in the universe?

592
01:16:10,340 --> 01:16:18,020
And that's probably top it himself out there with three frames enjoying the sunshine,

593
01:16:18,020 --> 01:16:26,310
very carefully controlling what he's printing with no production schedule, no production demands.

594
01:16:26,310 --> 01:16:36,030
Hahnemann went to running with grand plans. This is diptych of the so-called riding establishment.

595
01:16:36,030 --> 01:16:42,360
We have him on the left with a camera photographing the work of art.

596
01:16:42,360 --> 01:16:49,550
We have. What was supposedly Talbot doing an awkward portrait?

597
01:16:49,550 --> 01:16:57,740
Now it's got to be Talbot because they've now done a bronze statue in Chippenham after this, so surely going to be him.

598
01:16:57,740 --> 01:17:06,890
But I think he missed his mark on photography because if he was able to regrow his hair as it is here,

599
01:17:06,890 --> 01:17:13,010
I think he would have ultimately found a much bigger market for that.

600
01:17:13,010 --> 01:17:21,610
So we have the critical frames out there, each one of these required perhaps 10 or 15 minutes of exposure.

601
01:17:21,610 --> 01:17:28,420
Again, Nicholas Hinman photographing some statuary and doing a mysterious object on the right,

602
01:17:28,420 --> 01:17:36,040
which I believe is a a technical test of of photographic focussing.

603
01:17:36,040 --> 01:17:43,070
The reality of the running establishment would have been more like this. And they had no money.

604
01:17:43,070 --> 01:17:48,890
He couldn't really afford to heat the water. He couldn't afford all these helpers.

605
01:17:48,890 --> 01:17:56,550
And so. There was a buoyant frames, but he had to churn out prints no matter what.

606
01:17:56,550 --> 01:18:05,260
And if a certain number of prints were required by a certain date, then he had to do that.

607
01:18:05,260 --> 01:18:15,910
Consequently, a lot of the prints that had been made didn't hold up well, and photography soon got quite a black eye over this.

608
01:18:15,910 --> 01:18:23,020
So we have here two prints. The top one was actually in a pencil of nature,

609
01:18:23,020 --> 01:18:31,240
probably viewed a number of times in a drawing room in London, with coal smoke and sulphur affecting it.

610
01:18:31,240 --> 01:18:42,140
The bottom one was, for whatever reason, not used, probably put in a portfolio, put in a drawer and consequently survived in much better condition.

611
01:18:42,140 --> 01:18:51,640
By 1852. When the Society of Arts held its first major exhibition of photography.

612
01:18:51,640 --> 01:19:01,390
Tolbert entered some photographs as the Grand Old Master Photography also won album and the album.

613
01:19:01,390 --> 01:19:09,280
He labelled in his own hand here, these specimens represent an early period of the art from 1841 to 46.

614
01:19:09,280 --> 01:19:16,350
None of them are later already by 1852. Photography is ancient history to top it.

615
01:19:16,350 --> 01:19:20,970
He's gone past that his original plan failed.

616
01:19:20,970 --> 01:19:24,580
But he believed in the power of nature drawing.

617
01:19:24,580 --> 01:19:36,790
And he finally separated the two processes, he got nature to do the drawing in the camera and then made the print not using silver,

618
01:19:36,790 --> 01:19:48,280
which was vulnerable but made the prints in printer's ink. So he invented photography or he invented a photographically produced plate,

619
01:19:48,280 --> 01:19:55,720
which was then cleared of all photographic chemicals and printed in time tested printers ink on good paper.

620
01:19:55,720 --> 01:20:03,250
And so these photographic engravings, as they came to be known, this is my angel with patches.

621
01:20:03,250 --> 01:20:05,980
She's obviously a test one.

622
01:20:05,980 --> 01:20:17,560
But you would start with a glass positive, which was nature's recording of her own drawing you, then on the bottom there make a metal plate.

623
01:20:17,560 --> 01:20:24,190
That plate would be cleared of all photographic chemicals and you would make conventional prints and conventional press.

624
01:20:24,190 --> 01:20:32,870
So he would really solve the problem for the graphic publishing by this point.

625
01:20:32,870 --> 01:20:43,370
So we start with this marvellous idea and this hand attention to detail and finally get to the way that.

626
01:20:43,370 --> 01:20:48,230
Well, I used to say the way that we've seen most photographs, but of course we see most of them on a screen now,

627
01:20:48,230 --> 01:20:58,150
but if we can put back 10 years or so ago, we saw most photographs in our life in printer's ink, not not in silver.

628
01:20:58,150 --> 01:21:07,360
By 1846, this is the last negative that I know of it took his good friend, Calvert Jones is in there.

629
01:21:07,360 --> 01:21:13,070
It's in the cloisters of Laycock Abbey. National Trust has removed all the ivy now.

630
01:21:13,070 --> 01:21:18,790
It's not good for the stone, but it's certainly good, pictorially.

631
01:21:18,790 --> 01:21:29,270
And there's this marvellous print of somebody taking up the baton, someone taking up photography and taking it all in from him.

632
01:21:29,270 --> 01:21:38,330
In 1934, Matilda Talbot had a huge exhibition in Lake Gabby.

633
01:21:38,330 --> 01:21:51,760
No, I was not there, but all through Laycock, they set up all these panels and tables and put out hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.

634
01:21:51,760 --> 01:21:56,520
That panel right now, I've actually identified.

635
01:21:56,520 --> 01:22:05,940
There's a bit sad, but I've been able to identify a few of these by where the pins are in them and match them up with modern pinholes.

636
01:22:05,940 --> 01:22:18,350
I knew Harvey, but that panel, Richard, if we sent us off today.

637
01:22:18,350 --> 01:22:31,490
What would that be worth at auction, I wonder? More than 50 people you're seeing here.

638
01:22:31,490 --> 01:22:37,840
If all these were still in the same condition, you're probably seeing. Some hundreds of thousands, anyway.

639
01:22:37,840 --> 01:22:47,350
And but all of Laycock AP was was peppered with this, and it was at this time that they rediscovered this negative.

640
01:22:47,350 --> 01:22:55,360
And so often Talbots photography is dated back to the summer of 1835, but it's really because of this one negative.

641
01:22:55,360 --> 01:23:01,120
He really accomplished it in 1834. And yes, you can still count.

642
01:23:01,120 --> 01:23:07,120
I don't know if there's 200, but you can still count all those panes of glass.

643
01:23:07,120 --> 01:23:14,500
But to me, the incredible thing is these earliest pictures the the photo Grahams,

644
01:23:14,500 --> 01:23:22,030
where he took a natural object and had nature do her own drawing of that.

645
01:23:22,030 --> 01:23:29,550
And we see it here in its first iteration. All the veins and everything that are in those sleeves.

646
01:23:29,550 --> 01:23:35,640
This is my original title slide. Maybe I should have stuck with it, I'm not sure.

647
01:23:35,640 --> 01:23:48,160
Still credits Colin Ford with the lecture? To me, this shows the wonderful balance between light and its very powerful companion,

648
01:23:48,160 --> 01:23:59,800
the shadow and the tension between reality and the reality of our imagination, what we've put into things.

649
01:23:59,800 --> 01:24:05,530
So to me, this encompasses a lot of what it was about for photography.

650
01:24:05,530 --> 01:24:25,080
Thank you. You've been very patient. And this young lady has an important announcement.

651
01:24:25,080 --> 01:24:29,330
Yes, it involves drink. Yes, it does.

652
01:24:29,330 --> 01:24:34,490
Thank you very much for coming. It was wonderful. I'm sure we all enjoyed it immensely.

653
01:24:34,490 --> 01:24:43,520
Thank you. And I will now get Colin to present you with your mental health here.

654
01:24:43,520 --> 01:24:51,330
I. I'm glad Jim is already said that I want to do, because how can you top that?

655
01:24:51,330 --> 01:24:57,250
That's one of the most extraordinary lectures about the history I've ever heard of.

656
01:24:57,250 --> 01:25:01,180
And I thought I knew much about it and I've learnt so much.

657
01:25:01,180 --> 01:25:10,870
Well, this is just the intermission. The last figure I heard was that in the world today, and you've referred to it several times,

658
01:25:10,870 --> 01:25:15,850
we think there are more than four billion photographs taken every single day.

659
01:25:15,850 --> 01:25:22,210
Yes. Have we found the method of the man to catalogue more anyway?

660
01:25:22,210 --> 01:25:30,460
Although it is true, as I said at the beginning that the idea of the Colin Ford lecture was not mine on the money I used for it is not mine.

661
01:25:30,460 --> 01:25:35,620
I did decide in the end that the speaker should have some kind of souvenir.

662
01:25:35,620 --> 01:25:42,610
And so yes, it's perfectly true that commissioned and paid for the middle of which this is number two.

663
01:25:42,610 --> 01:25:52,750
The first one having built on the front, it says the ALP's Royal Photographic Society Historical Group Professor Larry Charles,

664
01:25:52,750 --> 01:25:58,060
Larry Jascha on me 2020 Colin Ford lecture on the back.

665
01:25:58,060 --> 01:26:08,240
It has a lenticular stereo, a series of which some of you will know are made by 3D images by a man called David Bird and.

666
01:26:08,240 --> 01:26:13,850
When we decided on this little trial, David, if he'd made to Fox Tobin Images.

667
01:26:13,850 --> 01:26:19,880
Oh, really? But he said, I sold the business. I don't do them anymore.

668
01:26:19,880 --> 01:26:25,700
So you'll have to make do with Julia Margaret Cameron. Well, but Larry, thank you a thousand times.

669
01:26:25,700 --> 01:26:31,160
I'm sorry. This is when you had a beer. It's no, it's you.

670
01:26:31,160 --> 01:26:36,470
Well, I thank you very much. There is the box that you can keep it in.

671
01:26:36,470 --> 01:26:56,320
Thank you.