Portfolio of eight photogenic images

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800 - 1877)

National Media Museum

1839

These four photogenic drawings and four positive paper prints made from photogenic drawings represent the origins of photography as we know it today. Photogenic drawings are the earliest form of negatives, produced by placing an opaque object directly on a sheet of sensitised paper and exposing it to sunlight until the unshielded paper darkened resulting in a light silhouette on a dark background; the paper prints were made by exposing a second sheet of paper to sunlight through the negative, resulting in a positive, the silhouette dark against a light background.

• Medium: photogenic drawings
• Art Fund Grant: £10000 ( Total: £51,600; Export stopped)
• ArtFunded in: 1996
• Vendor: Zelda Cheatle Gallery

Provenance

Believed to have been aquired by the vendor for sale by private treaty

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