DAY 42

HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

The Calotype

ACCENTUATING THE NEGATIVE

British scholar William Henry Fox Talbot had also been experimenting with the photographic process around the same time as Daguerre and Niepce. In fact, he had demonstrated a method of recording an image on paper in 1833, six years before Daguerre’s announcement of a successful process. He created a negative process whereby reverse silhouettes (white lines) were produced when objects were placed on a piece of paper treated with a combination of sodium chloride and silver nitrate and then exposed to the sun. After removing the objects from the paper, an image of them would remain.

He later employed a series of adapted camera obscuras into which he placed his light-sensitive paper. Upon hearing of Daguerre’s invention, he quickly rushed to perfect his own, which he called “talbotypes” and later “calotypes,” which he presented to the British Royal Society. Talbot felt a degree of competition with Daguerre, although their methods and final results were actually quite different. Daguerreotypes were fragile and had to be kept in glass to avoid deteriorating from too much handling; calotypes were sturdier, essentially printed on paper, foreshadowing the development of photographic prints in the commonly recognized format. The most significant difference, however, was that, because of the negative system (as opposed to the positive system employed by the daguerreotype), calotypes could be duplicated endlessly. —DJG