Talbot/photobook reading response

The introduction of the photobook and the photograph in general has made an immense contribution to the world of art and literature. I honestly didn’t know much about the history of the photobook or how it came about until I was able to read the excerpts from The Photobook and the work from William Henry Fox Talbot’s book The Pencil of Nature. One of the first things I found interesting from the intro the photobook was the fact that “photography was conceived as the hybrid offspring of art and science…a surrogate method of making paintings…” I found this to be really stimulating in the realm of photography because it seems at first that society wanted to separate science and art in general, but through the actions of scientific illustrations and diagrams it became possible. The fact that there were two types of photographic histories, one focused on technical developments and the other on aesthetics was also very thought provoking. I realized that within all realms of photography there is always a sense of advancing and development that creates a sense of beauty within all photographs, whether they are good or bad. One last thing that I particularly liked about this reading was the topic of the functionality of the photobook. John Grossage said that “firstly, it should contain great work…” I strongly believe in this statement because I think that regardless of however much time was spent on the work or whatever idea was originally implemented for the work, the book should contain work that the author believes is truly great. While reading the history on the first photobooks I found out that the first types of photobooks were simple works such as travel books, works of art and archaeological photo books. Within this particular reading I found it interesting that the process of transferring the photographic image to a plate could then be printed on paper, but that the problem was with the tonal range that it produced. This problem apparently took over a decade to figure out which seems like a great deal of time to figure out tonal range properties within books. Although, I think it’s interesting that a process as simple as transferring images to plates to be printed onto paper influenced the idea for photobooks because you wouldn’t necessarily group the two mediums. This makes me think of William Henry Fox Talbot and his work The Pencil of Nature where science and art merged into one medium: The photobook.

Talbot’s book created a lot of reactions and stirred results from the public that no other book did at the time. The reasoning behind this was due to the fact that Talbot created a book that was much more that “just the photos…” I honesty believe that this is where science and art began to merge into one, similar realm, simply due to Talbot’s strong scientific background and his interest in scientific illustrations. While reading the two excerpts on Talbot and his writings, I found it peculiar that Talbot mentioned the function of the camera and the amount of information it receives. He took the example of a camera taking the same amount of time to capture a group shot of 3 people compared to just one single person. He found it interesting that the camera didn’t take longer to capture the group shot than it did with the single person shot. I never thought of the camera in that sense, as if the camera would need to take longer to snap a photo if more subjects are presented to its eye, like more information for the camera. Luckily this isn’t the case with cameras and especially now with our technology we can capture any amount of information in the same amount of time. When actually reading Talbot’s book, I felt like I was reading a scientific journal on experiments on photographic paper, and how to transfer images in great detail to paper, so that they could eventually be printed in books. Talbot writes of how he worked with photograms and the camera obscura to capture photos of anything from a person to a large building. He experimented with various salt baths and silver iodide that resulted in many different outcomes. One part of this that I really found beautiful was Talbot’s mention of the brush going over the paper and how it sometimes causes an irregularity. I liked this because I’m always looking for ways to achieve a sense of abstractness and “irregularity,” and this is one of the ways that I have even created some of my photos.

Overall I found all of the readings very motivating and exciting and I really feel like they helped me better understand the function of a photobook in general. I feel confident with creating more photobooks and think that learning the history behind them contributed to that. Not only have photobooks been around for years but the idea of having a photo represented in book form has questioned the minds of thousands of artist’s for centuries. With Talbot’s introduction of The Pencil of Nature many future photographers and book makers were able to have guidance for creating unique works of art.