Lace

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the inventors of photography, was a polymath who felt as comfortable writing Greek verse as he did experimenting with botany and chemistry. His negative/positive process—and the reproductive possibilities it engendered—came to dominate photography until the digital age. Talbot held artistic aspirations, but he was also interested in the myriad scientific and commercial applications for photography. He hoped that his photographs of lace, for example, might make it easier to copy intricate patterns and thus facilitate manufacturing. The negative for this print was likely made by laying a fragment of lace upon a piece of photosensitized paper and exposing it to the sun, without the aid of a camera.

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