Retro photography is in vogue
As digital images proliferate, artists are making photos the slow, smelly way
WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT did not set out to be a photographer. He was inspired by friends who made exact drawings using a camera obscura—a dark room with a small hole in one side, which projects an inverted image of the outside view onto the opposite wall. An indifferent draughtsman, Talbot wished that by some trick the drawings could make themselves. By experimenting with chemical-coated paper, he found a way to do just that.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Ghosts in the machine”
From the June 2nd 2018 edition
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