Reading #1

While reading this first section of articles, particularly the expert from Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature, I began thinking of the competing draw of two types of photography - photographs that serve to recreate life as it is and photographs that attempt to alter and manipulate the way reality is perceived. Talbot, in his experiments, was attempting to create a device solely to record things as they are. What was interesting, however, was that at points he seemed very drawn in by the way his evolving medium would surprise him and do the opposite - present with an altered view of reality.

An example of this is in Talbot’s discovery of the negative technique. His discovery came when he was intrigued when the colors of an image he was experimenting in were reversed when he exposed them to light in the window. What drew Talbot in was his visual fascination with this sort of surreal perspective, stating that “after experiencing the beauty of this phenomenon” he attempted to preserve their appearance.

What was so interesting to me in this was that Talbot, a man completely focused on designing a method of accurately recreating life as it is, found so much “beauty” in the way the photographic negative manipulated reality in it’s reversal of colors. For me this hinted at the sort of intrinsic appeal of photography’s capability, even in it’s infancy, to manipulate real life but still have a strong link to it.