First Photographs

First Photographs is an eyewitness to the origins of modern photography. This book - the only monograph on Talbot to be supported by the curator of the Fox Talbot Museum - includes many never-before-published images of landscapes, architectural studies, and portraiture from Talbot's personal archive and selections from his detailed research notebooks made during the 1830s and 1840s, currently housed at the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock Abbey in Chippenham, England. In addition to his technological contributions, Talbot's own photographs represent exceptional and prescient artistic achievement. Arthur Ollman, director of the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, contributes an innovative analysis of both the aesthetic and social significance of Talbot's first photographic image, the "Oriel Window," through a remarkable evocation of Talbot's late-life reflection one sunny afternoon beneath his window in Lacock Abbey. Curator Carol McCusker considers how the women of the Lacock household influenced Talbot's aesthetic choices. First Photographs also includes a biography and timeline of Talbot's eventful life and revolutionary work by the preeminent Talbot scholar Michael Gray.