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Vortrag Larry J. Schaaf

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Wann

20.02.2013
von 18:15 bis 20:15

Art

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Wo

Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Vortragsraum 242, II. OG, Katharina-von-Bora-Straße 10, 80333 München

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“I have captured a shadow!” – William Henry Fox Talbot & the Conception of Photography

The English polymath, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), conceived of the art of photography in 1833 and achieved his first successes by 1834, but he did not disclose this to the public until 1839. A miserable draughtsman, he was motivated to invent photography by frustration at his drawings made while on a trip to Italy. Once he had harnessed nature to do his drawings for him, Talbot began to develop the visual language unique to photography and rapidly grew in his visual expressions. He became the first artist to be trained by photography, the very art that he had invented.

Prof. Larry J. Schaaf
is an independent historian based in Baltimore, Maryland USA, specializing in the pre-history and very early history of photography. A lapsed photographer, his interest in the foundations of the art was triggered by exposure to the Gernsheim Collection while he was teaching photography at The University of Texas at Austin. He has undertaken primary research on Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, Thomas Wedgwood, Sir John Herschel, and William Henry Fox Talbot, concentrating on primary archival resources. Dr. Schaaf is the founder and Editor of the online Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot, which provides full transcriptions of more than 10,000 letters. He has had numerous academic appointments and fellowships and was the 2005 Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford. Some of Dr. Schaaf’s books include Sun Gardens: Victorian Photograms by Anna Atkins; Out of the Shadows: Herschel, Talbot & the Invention of Photography; Records of the Dawn of Photography: Talbot’s Notebooks P & Q; and The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot.