Untitled
c. 1845
Medium
Salted paper, from the "Untitled Album"
Dimensions
Image: 15.4 × 21.1 cm (6 1/8 × 8 5/16 in.); Paper: 18.4 × 23 cm (7 1/4 × 9 1/16 in.); Album page: 22.8 × 28.3 cm (9 × 11 3/16 in.)
Classification
photograph
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
230083
Art Historical Context
William Henry Fox Talbot's *Untitled* (c. 1845), a salted paper print from the intriguing "Untitled Album," captures the pioneering spirit of early photography. Talbot, a British inventor and scholar, is celebrated as one of the medium's fathers, developing the calotype process in the 1840s—a breakthrough negative-positive system that allowed for multiple prints from a single image. Created just a few years after photography's public debut in 1839, this work exemplifies the experimental fervor of the era, when artists raced to harness light on paper. The salted paper technique, Talbot's signa...
About the Artist
William Henry Fox Talbot · 1800–1877
William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877), a British polymath whose ingenuity transformed visual representation, was born on 11 February 1800 at Melbury House, Dorset, the only child of William Davenport Talbot of Lacock Abbey and Lady Elisabeth Fox Strangways, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Ilchester. His father died shortly after his birth, leaving the family in financial straits until his formidable mo...