Photogram of a Fern
シダのフォトグラム
- Birth Year
- 1800
- Death Year
- 1877
- Date
- 1835/39 (reproduction from original print in 1984)
- Technique, Material, Format
- salted paper
- Dimension
- 22.4 x 18.6 cm
- Category
- Photograph or Moving Image by ForeignPhotographer/Artist
- Inventory Number
- 83-PHF-07G
The invention of photography is generally considered to have occurred in 1839, when a photographic technique called the daguerreotype was publicly announced in France. However, around 1835, British scientist William Henry Fox Talbot devised a method of capturing an object on paper. Talbot did so without using a camera. His technique involved placing the object on paper containing a photosensitizer and then exposing it to sunlight to capture the object’s silhouette (with light and shade reversed).
Talbot often used objects with detailed patterns and unique contours in order to test the sharpness of his images. This fern leaf is a typical example. You could say that the medium of photography first emerged as this small silhouette appeared from the darkness.
(MATSUNAGA Shintaro)