Negative and positive, no alternatives - 15 first photographs of William Talbot

On February 11, 1800, William Henry Fox Talbot was born in Wiltshire, Great Britain, a physicist and chemist, and it is to him that we owe the existence of photography (and photographers!). Talbot invented the negative-positive process - a method of producing a negative image from which an unlimited number of positive copies can be obtained. Talbot is also famous for his first photographs of Oxford and Paris.

In 1835, Talbot created the first negative using paper impregnated with silver nitrate and a salt solution. He photographed the inside of his library window with a camera with an optical lens only 8 centimeters in size.

In 1840, an inventor discovered a way to create a positive copy on salt paper from a paper negative. The technology made it possible to copy photographs; positives were printed on similar paper. Talbot called it calotype. The previously used daguerreotype made it possible to obtain only one, positive image at once.

In 1841, the scientist patented a negative-positive method of creating photographs. He photographed with silver iodine paper, developed with silver nitrate, and fixed with sodium thiosulfate. After fixing, the inventor dipped the negative into a container of wax, which made the picture transparent, and then placed the transparent negative on iodine-silver paper, exposed it, and obtained a positive photograph.

In 1844, William Talbot published a book of photographic illustrations called The Pencil of Nature.

Photos of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.