RE: May 1839 photographic (?) image question

In Britain, Talbot made the earliest known surviving photographic negative
on paper in the late summer of 1835, a small photogenic drawing of the oriel
window in the south gallery of his home, Lacock Abbey: this rare item is now
in the photographic collection of the Science Museum at the National Museum
of Photography, Film and Television at Bradford.

Before this he had been experimenting with photogenic drawings: by coating
drawing paper with salt solution and after it dried, adding a solution of
silver nitrate, and by placing a leaf, or fern, or a piece of lace, on the
paper's surface and exposing it to the sun, he obtained an image.
Photogenic drawing of a fern leaf, c.1835-40

Here is the information you require and follow it up with a web search under
Fox-Talbot

Richard

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Ptak [mailto:3legskilled@thesciencebookstore.com]
> Sent: 12 March 2005 20:31
> To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
> Subject: May 1839 photographic (?) image question
>
> Hello all.
>
>
>
> I've got a question on very early photographic practices for May 1839--I
> believe that I've never posted this question to this group before.
> Perhaps
> someone with the knowledge for the earliest photographic processes might
> have an insight?
>
>
>
> The image appears in the May 15, 1839 issue of the English "The Mirrour",
> the cover illustration of the sixth of six articles by Golding Bird
> entitled
> A Treatise on Photogenic Drawing. The image is labeled "A fac-simile of a
> photogenic drawing" and is the image of a fern.
>
> Now I've had a number of very early photographic items but this one is
> particularly knotty. At first glance it seems a simple woodcut-it is to
> my
> eye not quite correct for a woodcut, with too much bleed-through to the
> back
> of the page, too heavy, too rich a color. This does not eliminate it as a
> woodcut, but does make it more problematic to me.
>
> The problem to me is that I can't identify it as a Talbot process or
> shadowgraph. This is only a few months into Daguerre and things got busy
> quite quickly, so I hesitate to dismiss this as "just" a woodcut.
>
>
>
> If it is just a woodcut, then why even bother with the illustration? A
> woodcut of a photograph depicting a photogenic drawing? It is a surreal
> photography first, then, if it is a woodcut-the first non-photographic
> illustration of a photograph.
>
>
>
> Incidentally, this article was reproduced in the Journal of the Franklin
> Institute in September 1839 as "Observations on the application of
> Heliographic or Photogenic Drawing to Botanical Purposes; with an account
> of
> an economic mode of preparing the Paper..."
>
>
>
> Perhaps it is just a woodcut, but I'd really like to make positively sure
> that it is not a photographic process.
>
>
>
> Many thanks for your thoughts,
>
>
>
> John Ptak
>
>
>
> ---
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