Photographers have called for 11 February to be named ‘Talbot Day’ in memory of British photographic pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot who was born on that day in 1800.
This year also coincides with the 175th anniversary of the year that Fox Talbot created the first ‘photographic negative’.
The British inventor is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern photography.
He had investigated the action of light on paper, treated at first with nitrate of silver and later with chloride of silver, after using the camera lucida on a trip to Italy in 1833.
In 1835 his experiments led him to produce a picture at his home, Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire.
Talbot created what is believed to be the earliest surviving photographic negative, from an image of a latticed window in Lacock Abbey’s south gallery.
The treasure is now stored at the National Media Museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire.
A group of Wiltshire-based photographers plan to mark 11 February – the day Fox Talbot was born 210 years ago – with a special dinner at the George Inn in Lacock.
‘This part of the historic public house used to be the carpenter’s shop where the original wooden camera – now known as the Mousetrap – was made for Talbot,’ says the group, led by press photographer Trevor Porter.
Guest of honour will be Roger Watson, curator of the Fox Talbot Museum.
Picture: William Henry Fox Talbot – An oak tree in winter – c.1842-43 (British Library)
