Lacock Abbey – Home of Henry Fox Talbot Inventor of Film Based Photography

I finally made it to Lacock Abbey during my recent trip to England. I teach about Henry Fox Talbot in my Photo Appreciation class and visiting the abbey has been on my “bucket list” for a long time. It was like stepping back in time walking through the abbey grounds and exploring the museum that tracks all aspects of the photographic mediums embryonic beginnings.

Henry Fox Talbot

Talbot captured the worlds first photographic negative at Lacock Abbey in 1835 called Latticed Window, therefore beating out Louis Daguerre who patented his Daguerreotype process in 1839. Talbot’s process was called the Calotype which paved the way for photographic processes on film still used today.

First Photograph by Talbot of Latticed Window at Lacock Abbey

Film based photography can trace its lineage directly back to Talbot’s early experiments, and because his home, Lacock Abbey features in so many of his early images, students of photographic history the world over feel they know the place before they visit it. Talbot therefore has a solid claim to be referred to as the ‘father of modern photography’, just as the daguerrotype is often referred to as photography’s “false start” essentially because the daguerreotype process does not allow for multiple copied made from one image. There is no negative with the daguerreotype and that in itself led to its demise.

Fox Talbot Shooting Portraits with Calotype Process

Photography is a relatively new medium compared to painting and drawing, however it has reinvented itself multiple times in its short history. The word photography comes from “light drawing” because light is the primary catalyst for making photographs.  Photography wasn’t always as easy it is now with our Iphone cameras. It used to be a very complex, toxic and cumbersome process to capture a decent photograph.

Photography is in its embryonic stage compared to other art forms like sculpture, architecture and painting. The art of painting goes back 40,000 years and the photographic medium is only around 175 years old. Early photographers initially tried to emulate painting and then eventually broke away from soft focus, painterly pictures striving to find its own identity as a medium unto itself.

The Open Door Calotype by Fox Talbot

Photography has evolved and reinvented itself numerous times since its invention. At first it was not considered an art – just the step-child for painting – nothing more than a new tool for artists to replicate the external world.

Digital technology has completely revolutionized the medium of photography just in the past 20 years. Photography has an amazing and unique history, and the concept (theory) of photography goes back to the drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci and even before him to Chinese and Greek philosophers who conceptualized the basic principles of optics and the camera obscura that evolved to Niepce and Daguerre’s experiments and innovations with light sensitive materials. Then evolved to Henry Fox Talbot’s Calotype process that relied on the positive/negative process that is essentially the ancestor of traditional analog photography.

Camera Obscura

The invention of Photography had a huge impact and effect on the artists (Impressionists) of the 19th century and literally made them rethink their approach to art. We start to notice artists like Monet, Gauguin and Cezanne exploring more abstract techniques due to the fact that photography could replicate external reality so much better than painting.

Monet Impressionist Painting

Once the invention took hold and began being used to create portraits it really shook up the art world because many artists viewed photography as a threat to their livelihood as artists. There is no doubt in my mind that Daguerre was a shrewd business man and self promoter. He beat Fox Talbot and his Calotype process that included a negative image to the punch so to speak and got the first patent by the French Government in 1839.

Photography has come a long way in a short period of time and now with digital technology I can’t even imagine what type of new innovations will come about with the photography medium.

I’m really glad I was able to visit the Lacock Abbey/Henry Fox Talbot Photography Museum while on my last trip to England. It was definitely one of the highlights of my visit.

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