The Pencil of Nature - Photographs

Photographs

The 24 plates in the book were carefully selected to demonstrate the wide variety of uses to which photography could be put. They include a variety of architectural studies, scenes, still-lifes, and closeups, as well as facsimiles of prints, sketches, and text. Due to the long exposure times involved, however, Talbot included only one portrait, The Ladder (Plate XIV). Though he was no artist, Talbot also attempted to illustrate how photography could become a new form of art with images like The Open Door (Plate VI).

The complete list of plates is as follows:

  • Part 1
    • I. Part of Queen's College, Oxford
    • II. View of the Boulevards at Paris
    • III. Articles of China
    • IV. Articles of Glass
    • V. Bust of Patroclus
  • Part 2
    • VI. The Open Door
    • VII. Leaf of a Plant
    • VIII. A Scene in a Library
    • IX. Fac-simile of an Old Printed Page
    • X. The Haystack
    • XI. Copy of a Lithographic Print
    • XII. The Bridge of OrlĂ©ans
  • Part 3
    • XIII. Queen's College, Oxford: Entrance Gateway
    • XIV. The Ladder
    • XV. Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire
  • Part 4
    • XVI. Cloisters of Lacock Abbey
    • XVII. Bust of Patroclus
    • XVIII. Gate of Christchurch
  • Part 5
    • XIX. The Tower of Lacock Abbey
    • XX. Lace
    • XXI. The Martyrs' Monument
  • Part 6
    • XXII. Westminster Abbey
    • XXIII. Hagar in the Desert
    • XXIV. A Fruit Piece

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Famous quotes containing the word photographs:

    “All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this—as in other ways—they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.”
    —John Berger (b. 1926)

    “The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.”
    —Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)

    “As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.”
    —Susan Sontag (b. 1933)