Thank you, Philip. Good morning, everyone.
I join the brilliant speakers that preceded me in thanking the organisers of this symposium and Geoff for inviting me.
I am truly delighted to be here and to take part in this event.
In closing this panel today, I have the pleasure of introducing you to William Henry Fox Talbot's
experiments in photomechanical printing.
This is the object of my PhD research, developed at the De Montfort University under the supervision of Professor Kelley Wilder, Dr Geoffey Belknap, and Dr Beatriz Pichel.
As we are going to see, Talbot's photomechanical experiments are a rich and complex aspect of his work, which occupied roughly 30 years of his life.
In this talk, I want to specifically address the materiality of his experimental practice,
focusing on how certain materials moulded and developed his view of photography.
If you're here in this lecture theatre today with great probability, you're already rather familiar with Talbot and his work on photography.
However, in spite of the impressive volume of research on Talbot, we still know very little about his photomechanical work from the late 1840s onwards.
During this time, Talbot produced two patented processes the photographic engraving in 1852 and the
photoglyphic engraving in 1858. From period accounts and the few studies available
We know that he was not the definition of success within this field of research,
as none of his patents was ever commercially profitable or applied within the printmaking industries.
For instance, in the appendix of the English edition of Gaston Tissandier's A History and Handbook of Photography,
published just one year after Talbot's death, his son Charles expresses the hope for Talbot's photomechanical processes to be
turned into and I quote a general utility instead of a mere scientific curiosity,
and of quote, stressing the little fortune and application of the invention.
However, the great amount of photomechanical material that we can find today spread across several archives and collections, reveals a more nuanced story.
All this material provides, in fact, a vivid trace of the intensity and extension of Talbot's experimental practice, as well as his creative approach to it.
For instance, if we look at some of the prints and proofs on display in the exhibition Bright Sparks curated by Professor Batchen
We see how many of these openly show their experimental nature.
This is expressed by the size and the irregular asymmetric cut of the paper, or in the multiple subjects erratically engraved on the same plate
Which printingmark is well visible due to a sloppy cleaning of the ink.
This other proof instead bears on the verso the handwritten date of the experiment, which give us a precious hint to match these with Talbot's notes.
What these prints show and have in common is that none of them is an end product for sale.
They are all in-between stages of an experiment, much different than a finished print that looked more like this one.
Not only the size of the paper is different, but the photoengraving is here,
presented together with a caption addressing the subject and right underneath the image indication on the author, technique, and the date of the print.
This, however, is not the most common typology of material, as the large majority belongs to the first group I showed you proofs and working material.
These are notoriously more challenging for the objects to research as they are small traces of the in-between phases of practising,
designing, and experimenting a new process. Needless to say, it is a path disseminated with more failures than successes.
However, I believe that their experimental value is much more interesting than these labels and image content on the proof,
which was, as we are going to see, subordinated to precise criteria that Talbot put in place.
Prints and proofs are not the only photographic objects available to unpack these experiments.
Photomechanical processes encompass multiple stages of image manipulation, and prints are only at the end of this chain.
On the other hand, printing plates were at the very heart of Talbot's experiments.
He used a variety of different materials, mostly steel, especially in the first years,
but also copper, steel-faced copper plates and occasionally zinc ones.
Each one add a different set of properties and technological implications which impacted Talbot's decision.
For instance, copper was easier to engrave, but right because of its ductility,
It would bear less impressions than a steel plate. It is also interesting to note that in the large majority of the cases it was not Talbot who printed
from the metrixes he made. During 30 years of experimentation, he entrusted several practical men,
printers and engravers, whose hands on knowledges on printmaking complemented Talbot's photographic expertise.
Therefore, we could safely say that Talbot spent most of his time working on ways of marking the metal plates instead of printing from them,
developing and designing different ways of doing so.
As for the metals of the plates, the selection of subjects was closely linked with performance.
Most of the processes encompassed the step of impressing a subject onto the plate, and he did so by contact printing.
For this reason, most of the first experiments reproduced natural the objects and textiles.
What made these suitable subjects was a series of material qualities which were crucial: flatness, smallness, texture, and a clear outline.
For instance, a glass like this one, which was used as a subject in this famous photograph,
would have not been a good subject for the photographic or the photoglyphic engraving process.
It is completely transparent, which compromises the outline and most importantly is not flat.
Flatness was particularly crucial as the surface of the entire subject had to be in close contact with the photosensitive gelatine spread on the plate,
Preferably blocked under a photographic coping frame.
Another aspect that made the botanicals specimens and textiles great subjects was their texture. Unlike paper photographs,
They were not a uniform, continuous opaque surface, and their outline successfully translated into detail detailed ink work.
In this phase of Talbot's experiments, it is not uncommon to come across several proofs of the same subjects,
which give us a fair idea of Talbot's modes of consistently experimenting with the same subjects.
And here instead is an enlargement to show you the impressive degree of detail he could achieve with lace.
In order to enhance performance, in 1853 Talbot developed a new technique called the photographic veil, a gauze
which grid provided a screen to split up large areas into smaller sections
easier to ink. This element would provide texture to those subjects which are not changing the overall character of an etching.
Nevertheless, as this image shows, this would not provide a nuanced halftone, but only a flat texturised tone.
Talbot's aim was, however,
to use the photographic and photoglyphic engraving processes to reproduce information carried by paper objects such as engravings,
handwritten or printed documents and photographs.
Of course, photographs and in particular photographic halftones were in fact the real testing ground of his process, especially in the late 1850s.
In order to overcome their uniformity and opacity, Talbot made large use of wax paper positives, such as the ones you can see here in the slide,
this would make the photographs more transparent and therefore enhance the transferring of detail onto the bichromated gelatine.
Here you can see, for instance, a few examples of how these albumen prints actually translated into ink work.
And here again, we have an enlargement to show you the halftone quality he could achieve.
In these experiments, Talbot moved from the photographic veil to another technique, a variant of the aquatint ground where he used asphalt or resin powder.
However, if waxed paper positives produced a fine results, Talbot also used glass positives, mostly commercial ones made by French photographers,
which, thanks to the high quality of detail and transparency, proved to be one of the most performative objects.
To conclude, what we have seen today is how materials critically informed Talbot's photomechanical practice.
Their use was closely linked with performance, which pushed Talbot to experiment with unusual solutions and objects such as a gauze, used for the
first time as a photomechanical screen to overcome some of the technical limits of the process.
I hope this overview triggered your curiosity as there is still so much to learn. In spite of its little fortune,
photomechanical printing was without a doubt one of the fields of research to which Talbot dedicated more time and money,
as he often recalled. By unpacking his engagement with these experiments and the materials involved,
We can begin to see our scientific curiosity actually informed Talbot's view of photography and how it could be reproduced in printers ink.
Thank you.