[Music] this time around the 1830s is really when photography comes together de garis in France making images with silver iodide on metal plates and Talbot is working in England making images with silver chloride on paper working simultaneously in two different countries not quite knowing about the other but that changes when you start to have articles in the the press now it's public and so a rivalry begins [Music] William Henry Fox Talbot is a gentleman scholar in England living in an old Abbey in the village of Leacock he was a member of the House of Lords he was a wealthy individual who had many many interests Talbot is on his honeymoon in Lake Como in Italy and he's trying to make drawings with a camera lucida he's trying to do pencil sketches and realize that he has no skill whatsoever in drawing he wants to make pictures with in a camera obscura all he has to do is find the material that he can put into the back of the camera to to record the image finally when he returns home to Lacock Abbey he starts doing experiments and he is able to produce a photographic image Talbot is making images by using silver chloride in the production of making what he called photogenic drawings which are essentially just coding paper with salt coating paper with silver nitrate and place a fern there are objects on top of the paper put a piece of glass on top of that and lay it in the sunlight it will darken up to that point it's not so much different than what Wedgwood do but the Epson Wedgwood could not figure out a way to keep the drawings what Talbot discovers is that if he takes that image and puts it into a stronger solution of salt water all the areas that were not exposed to light all the areas that didn't turn to metallic silver become less sensitive they are not removed completely but he can show them to people in the house you can see them by candlelight this is the type of camera that Talbot used in his earliest experiments with photogenic drawing many of them are still around and you can see them as long as you don't bring them out into too much light usually when you see them they're sort of under a piece of velvet so it feels like this intimate experience of looking at a photograph in its first days now photography so ubiquitous that we probably don't think about how special and magical that experience was tall but is the first person to make a salted paper print he actually invents something that's permanent it's basically his photogenic drawing process that has been fixed with hypo sodium thiosulfate is the modern term is potential of removing silver halide is discovered by Sir John Herschel salted paper prints because of the way they are made where the image material sinks into the paper tend to have a less crisp look to them there was sort of this dichotomy between the crisp clean almost three-dimensional quality of the daguerreotype and then the softer almost more granulated sensibility of the salted paper print so that sort of got reduced to information versus artistry in the early years of photography's history Taal that improves the photogenic drawing process by switching from silver chloride to silver iodide the same silver halide that de Guerre uses in his process the latent image calotype process that he invents in 1840 allows him to make a little bit of an exposure and then he develops out the invisible image to a visible image using Gallic acid and so now he could put this into a camera and actually do pictures of living human beings he can then make photographic negatives and after those negatives are fixed with hypo he can then place those on top of a second sheet of sensitive paper exposed that to light and now he makes a positive proof [Music] so he has negative and positive he essentially introduces the negative positive potential for photography that becomes the standard of photography until the the invention of digital photography the rivalry between de guerre and Talbot continues today there are champions of Talbot and the champions of de Guerre both camps feel that their man invented photography in fact it's all photography just a different type after Talbot figured out this negative positive process he wanted to show what photography could do so his way to do that was to produce a series of publications called the pencil of nature pencil nature contains text explaining Talbots process salted paper prints mostly showing Talbots home at Lacock Abbey and each of the photographs is meant to display one of the various uses of photography Talbots showing the reproducibility of the photograph which really became one of the most important aspects of the medium [Music]