In 1844, in what is often considered to be the first photographically illustrated book, The Penci... more In 1844, in what is often considered to be the first photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the key figures in the invention of photography, provides a series of arguments and musings on the various beneficial properties of this new technology. 1 Accompanying these arguments are corresponding photographs that serve as examples or visual proofs of photography's abilities. In part, the book is an exploration of the possible uses of photographic illustrations within a book and samples of how to arrange photos in relation to text. There are photographs of buildings, still-lifes, haystacks, Claudian landscapes, and so on. One picture stands out insofar as it disrupts the argument/visual-proof pattern: Plate VIII, titled "A Scene in a Library" (Fig. .1). The only text accompanying this section is the following: Among the many novel ideas which the discovery of photography has suggested, is the following rather curious experimentation or speculation. I have never tried it, indeed, nor am I aware that any one else has either tried or proposed it, yet I think it is one which, if properly managed, must
In 1844, in the first photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, Fox Talbot include... more In 1844, in the first photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, Fox Talbot includes a perplexing chapter, “A Scene in a Library,” which couples a photograph of a bookshelf with a seemingly unrelated passage of text. Here, Talbot speculates about a fantastical voyeuristic scenario involving a proto-night vision device and its literary possibilities. In this chapter, it is shown that the vexing nature of “A Scene in a Library,” particularly Talbot’s pairing of invisible light with books, stems from the challenge that light beyond the visible range of the spectrum, such as ultraviolet and infrared, posed to the dominant epistemology of the time. His recourse to a literary form of invisibility was an attempt to reconcile the incommensurability of invisible light with the prevailing episteme structured around tropes of visible light and the eye.
In 1844, in the first photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, Fox Talbot include... more In 1844, in the first photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, Fox Talbot includes a perplexing chapter, “A Scene in a Library,” which couples a photograph of a bookshelf with a seemingly unrelated passage of text. Here, Talbot speculates about a fantastical voyeuristic scenario involving a proto-night vision device and its literary possibilities. In this chapter, it is shown that the vexing nature of “A Scene in a Library,” particularly Talbot’s pairing of invisible light with books, stems from the challenge that light beyond the visible range of the spectrum, such as ultraviolet and infrared, posed to the dominant epistemology of the time. His recourse to a literary form of invisibility was an attempt to reconcile the incommensurability of invisible light with the prevailing episteme structured around tropes of visible light and the eye.
In 1844, in what is often considered to be the first photographically illustrated book, The Penci... more In 1844, in what is often considered to be the first photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the key figures in the invention of photography, provides a series of arguments and musings on the various beneficial properties of this new technology. 1 Accompanying these arguments are corresponding photographs that serve as examples or visual proofs of photography's abilities. In part, the book is an exploration of the possible uses of photographic illustrations within a book and samples of how to arrange photos in relation to text. There are photographs of buildings, still-lifes, haystacks, Claudian landscapes, and so on. One picture stands out insofar as it disrupts the argument/visual-proof pattern: Plate VIII, titled "A Scene in a Library" (Fig. .1). The only text accompanying this section is the following: Among the many novel ideas which the discovery of photography has suggested, is the following rather curious experimentation or speculation. I have never tried it, indeed, nor am I aware that any one else has either tried or proposed it, yet I think it is one which, if properly managed, must
In 1844, in the first photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, Fox Talbot include... more In 1844, in the first photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, Fox Talbot includes a perplexing chapter, “A Scene in a Library,” which couples a photograph of a bookshelf with a seemingly unrelated passage of text. Here, Talbot speculates about a fantastical voyeuristic scenario involving a proto-night vision device and its literary possibilities. In this chapter, it is shown that the vexing nature of “A Scene in a Library,” particularly Talbot’s pairing of invisible light with books, stems from the challenge that light beyond the visible range of the spectrum, such as ultraviolet and infrared, posed to the dominant epistemology of the time. His recourse to a literary form of invisibility was an attempt to reconcile the incommensurability of invisible light with the prevailing episteme structured around tropes of visible light and the eye.
In 1844, in the first photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, Fox Talbot include... more In 1844, in the first photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, Fox Talbot includes a perplexing chapter, “A Scene in a Library,” which couples a photograph of a bookshelf with a seemingly unrelated passage of text. Here, Talbot speculates about a fantastical voyeuristic scenario involving a proto-night vision device and its literary possibilities. In this chapter, it is shown that the vexing nature of “A Scene in a Library,” particularly Talbot’s pairing of invisible light with books, stems from the challenge that light beyond the visible range of the spectrum, such as ultraviolet and infrared, posed to the dominant epistemology of the time. His recourse to a literary form of invisibility was an attempt to reconcile the incommensurability of invisible light with the prevailing episteme structured around tropes of visible light and the eye.
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