The Metropolitan Museum of Art - [The Oriel Window, South Gallery, Lacock Abbey]

Art Object

Faking It Symposium: Welcome and Introduction

The symposium "Truth, Lies, and Photographs" was presented in conjunction with the exhibition Faking It: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop, on view October 11, 2012, through January 27, 2013. In this introduction, Mia Fineman, Assistant Curator in the Department of Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, provides a brief overview of the history of manipulated photography, and gives contemporary examples of images created using Photoshop.

Part One of Seven

Recorded November 2, 2012

The exhibition is made possible by Adobe.
This program is made possible by Joyce Frank Menschel.

James Nares: Street
(00:02:17) 17992 views

[The Oriel Window, South Gallery, Lacock Abbey]

William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800–1877)

Date:: probably 1835
Medium:: Photogenic drawing negative
Dimensions:: 8.3 x 10.7 cm (3 1/4 x 4 3/16 in.), irregular
Classification:: Negatives
Credit Line:: The Rubel Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee and Anonymous Gifts, 1997
Accession Number:: 1997.382.1

This artwork is not on display

Description

This mysterious view through the diamond-paned oriel window of Talbot's home is one of the earliest photographs in existence—a remarkable relic of the inventor's earliest attempts to make pictures solely through the action of light and chemicals. He brushed a piece of writing paper with salt and silver nitrate and placed it in a small wooden camera stationed on a mantel opposite the window for an exposure that may have lasted hours. The image is tonally reversed—a negative, though the term did not yet exist—as the paper darkened most where it recorded the bright light of the windows.
Provenance

Lacock Abbey; Mathilde Talbot; Harold White, Filby, Norfolk, England; [Sean Thackrey, San Francisco]; Rubel Collection; [Hans P. Kraus, Jr. Fine Photography, New York]
See also
Who
William Henry Fox Talbot (104)
What
Photographs (32,550)

Drawings (27,930)

Paper (23,968)

Negatives (7,539)

Photogenic drawings (56)
Where
Europe (148,586)

United Kingdom (25,557)
When
A.D. 1800-1900 (80,185)
In the Museum
Photographs (29,384)
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) and the Invention of Photography

Great Britain and Ireland, 1800–1900 A.D.
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Faking It Symposium: Welcome and Introduction

[The Oriel Window, South Gallery, Lacock Abbey]

William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800–1877)

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Faking It Symposium: Welcome and Introduction

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[The Oriel Window, South Gallery, Lacock Abbey]

William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800–1877)

Met Media

Met Kids

Met Store