Sun pictures: Printing Talbot's calotype negatives

Abstract

The inspiration for a major exhibition to commemorate the centenary of W. H. F. Talbot's death in 1877 arose from a number of projects in which the Kodak Museum had been involved. In September 1973, for the first programme in the BBC Television series ‘Pioneers of Photography’, the author visited Lacock Abbey to demonstrate Talbot's early photogenic drawing process. The sensitizing process used was based upon Talbot's own formulae, modified for use in a teaching programme prepared for the Kodak Education Service some years before1. Thin paper, of the type used for making carbon copies of typewriting, of weight 45 grammes per square metre, was soaked in a solution of 50 grammes of sodium chloride in one litre of water until thoroughly wetted. The salted paper was dried, and sensitized when required by soaking in a solution of 100 grammes of silver nitrate in one litre of distilled water, to which 10 millilitres of glacial acetic acid had been added. About one minute was sufficient to convert the salt in the paper to silver chloride, and to give the necessary excess of silver nitrate to make a sensitive printing-out paper. When dried, the paper could be used to make prints by exposure to strong light under a leaf in a printing frame, yielding excellent prints in a few minutes in bright sunshine. Talbot stabilized his early pictures by treating them with a strong salt solution; to give greater permanence to the modern prints, they were fixed in conventional photographic fixing solutions. In the early summer of 1975, the same process was used to produce photogenic drawings both by contact and through the camera for display in the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock, then under construction. During this work, some of Talbot's original calotype negatives were printed experimentally, while on loan from the Royal Photographic Society. Though not perfect, these modern calotype prints were sufficiently successful to suggest the possibility of an exhibition, to be prepared in honour of Talbot's centenary. It was intended that the display include a number of ‘salted paper’ prints from original negatives. It was felt that these would convey the special character of the calotype print far more effectively than would be possible with modern photographic materials.

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