W. H. F. Talbot, The Pencil of Nature and the camera

Abstract

Talbot's publication of The Pencil of Nature was an extraordinary achievement, a complex project representing the culmination of his invention of photography. In it he demonstrated that light-sensitive chemicals, when applied to paper and exposed to light, produced, with or without a camera, recognizable images of the space of the world and its objects. Talbot demonstrated also that the photograph had economic and cultural value and could have a vital social role. For Talbot, photography was an entirely new means of making the world not simply visible but newly visual, and The Pencil of Nature demonstrated how.